By the late nineteenth century, large black birds like crows and ravens were well-established in European painting as signs of death and harbingers of doom.
In Arnold Böcklin’s Ruin by the Sea from 1881, the arrival of a large flock of crows to the broken walls of this old and ruined building is an unmistakable sign of death added to its gradual decay.
For this Knight at the Crossroads (1882), Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov turns to the folk tale of the Three Journeys of Ilya Muromets, its weary knight here contemplating which way to go. The stone in front of him advises “If you go straight ahead, there will be no life; there is no way forward for he who travels past, walks past or flies past”. A human skull and part of a horse skeleton aren’t encouraging, as crows or ravens wait patiently for his carrion.
For John William Waterhouse, large black birds were associated with the arcane world of The Magic Circle, from 1886. His barefoot sorceress is drawing a blazing circle in the dust around her, as a potion bubbles away over the fire. In her left hand she holds a golden sickle. Outside her magic circle are her audience of half a dozen ravens or crows.
Possibly Marie Spartali Stillman’s only oil painting, of Antigone Giving Burial Rites to the Body of Her Brother Polynices, made around 1883-84, casts crows in their classical role. Polynices and Eteocles, the sons of Oedipus, quarrelled over which should rule Thebes, leading to their deaths. King Creon, who succeeded them, decreed that Polynices was neither to be mourned nor buried, on pain of death by stoning. Polynices’ sister, Antigone, defied the order and was caught. Here Stillman shows Antigone (centre) attending to the burial of her brother, her companion fearfully trying to draw her away. They are greeted by carrion crows, and at the far right is the headstone of a grave.
Of all the paintings of crows, by far the best-known is one of the last paintings of Vincent van Gogh, completed around 10 July 1890.
There’s controversy over the reading of the birds in his Wheatfield with Crows. They could simply have been present, as is so common in real life, as part of the landscape. It’s very tempting to suggest that they represent his imminent death, but there’s no indication that at the time he was contemplating that, or suicide. They could well be a more personal symbol associated with his life, or with sadness and loneliness.
In the 1890s, Lovis Corinth started to take landscape painting more seriously, including this Landscape with a Large Raven, painted in late autumn of 1893. The ravens here are assumed to be harbingers of death. In this otherwise deserted countryside, with the winter drawing close, this painting could be read as indicating Corinth’s bleak melancholy. Although he certainly suffered feelings of mortality and had times of depression, those are not part of the received image of his social life, nor of many of his paintings.
There’s also something distinctly sinister about the birds in Stanislaw Siestrzencewicz’s Crows Before the Sleigh from about 1900, where they’re spooking the horses. Could death be just around the next corner?
Like many artists around the turn of the century, Jakub Schikaneder displayed a somewhat irreverent attitude to death, as shown in his undated Last Journey. The Grim Reaper (death) clad in red here accompanies a new recruit to the underworld or afterlife, as they walk together surrounded by large black crows. One of the birds appears to have met its own bloody end just in front of them.
Landscape with Ravens from 1911 is perhaps one of Egon Schiele’s more challenging landscapes. It shows a fence with irregular black palings receding into the distance over a hillock. On this side of the fence is a small hut with a framework of poles outside it. Several poles with small crosstrees have been planted into the ground. To the right is a black band to establish repoussoir and break any symmetry, and at the foot is a straggly tree with a few brown leaves still remaining. Wheeling over them all are flocks of ravens, in his decaying world of autumn.
The Pilgrim Folk (1914) may well have been Marie Spartali Stillman’s last major painting, and is her valediction to Italy, which had influenced her so much. It refers to one of her favourite literary works, Dante’s Vita Nuova, via Rossetti, a quotation from which accompanied the painting. This passage contains Dante’s account of Beatrice’s death to a group of newly-arrived pilgrims.
Dante leans out from a window at the left, addressing three pilgrims below. At the lower left corner, the winged figure of Love crouches in grief, poppies scattered in front of him. Pilgrims around the well are taking refreshment after their travels, and more are arriving through the alley beyond. Black crows fly in flocks above, symbolising death. The landscape behind is very Italian, and the whole has a fairy-tale unreality about its mediaeval details. Even more appropriately, this painting was completed immediately before the outbreak of the First World War, and wasn’t exhibited until 1919.
My final painting appears to be another straightforward landscape with crows, in Margret Hofheinz-Döring’s Boßler, Swabian Alps from 1981. There’s still something faintly worrying about those birds, though.