Special thanks to the Microsoft Corporation for permission to use following biographical information from Microsoft® Encarta '97:
Arnold Böcklin was a Swiss painter whose allegorical and fantastical paintings, many based on mythical creatures, anticipated 20th-century surrealism. His early style consisted of idealized classical landscapes. In the 1870s, he turned to fantastic scenes from German legends, paralleling the use by Richard Wagner of similar subjects in opera. His later works, such as The Island of the Dead (in five versions, from 1880, one in the Metropolitan Museum, New York City), became increasingly dreamlike and nightmarish.
