OTTO NÜCKEL

(1888 – Cologne - 1955)

The Eel Butcher (Der Aalschlächter)

Signed lower right O.Nuckel

Watercolor and ink over charcoal and pencil on paper

14 3/8 x 11 inches (36.6 x 27.8 cm)

Otto Nückel was born and died in Cologne, though he spent most of his life in Munich. He studied medicine briefly in Breisgau, but quickly abandoned the pursuit to move to Munich in 1910 and take up painting at the private art school of Heinrich Knirr (1862-1944). After serving in World War I he moved outside of Munich to Bad Aibling, where he worked in the former studio of the German Realist Wilhelm Leibls (1844-1900). Nückel’s early expressionistic canvases did not earn him great acclaim, however he became highly regarded for his illustrations and prints, particularly lead engravings. His dynamic and evocative images in black and white earned him numerous commissions to illustrate novels and editions by writers such as Thomas Mann, A. M. Frey and E. T. A. Hofmann. Nückel became a member of the Munich Secession in 1927, and in 1932 was employed as a permanent contributor to the satirical magazine Simplicissimus.

In 1926 Nückel published his most famous work, a wordless novel titled Destiny (Schicksal). The book is a gruesome social critique that follows the violent demise of a modern German woman. The tragic, unnamed protagonist endures abuse by every man in her life, commits infanticide, is forced to turn to prostitution, and is ultimately shot by the police after murdering a man with an axe. Each page contains a single, skillfully rendered etching created with a lining tool, which incises multiple parallel lines simultaneously. The technique results in a wonderful hatching effect, imbuing each scene with sophisticated depth and light. Created entirely from lead cut prints as opposed to the more common woodcut, the 190 images of Destiny serve as an allegory of the Weimar Republic. The book ruthlessly confronts the reader with the harsh realities that plagued so many Germans after World War I. Nückel continued to focus on political satire even as the Nazis rose to power, however many of his works were ultimately seized from state museums and galleries, declared Degenerate Art.

The Eel Butcher is a grim depiction of a man in a basement, winding up his axe in preparation to blunt a struggling eel before butchering it. The work demonstrates Nückel’s skill with watercolor, notably the use of a wet-on-wet technique which creates reflective puddles on the floor, as well as macabre bloodstains on the butcher block and the man’s knuckles. The only light source for the picture is the cellar window, which highlights the barrier between the bright outside world and the constricted dark interior. Nückel depicts an oppressive, underground space in which the violent task is performed away from the public, likely implying a metaphor for the isolation of man. The psychological intensity of the scene is underlined by a pragmatic narrative, asserting that the eel must die so that the butcher may survive. Despite this truth, the anthropomorphic expression on the piscine victim’s face contrasts sympathetically with those of its lifeless hanging comrades, a macabre vanitas of the New Objectivity. The scene is also reminiscent of an image from Nückel’s Destiny (Fig. 1), in which a woman raises an ax, about to strike a man who is choking an assailant. Her dripping shadow foreshadows the bloodshed soon to ensue.