Marie Rosenthal-Hatschek, Ernst Haeckel. Oil on canvas, 1915.

This painting has a poignant history. Marie Rosenthal-Hatschek (born 1871 in Lemberg), widely known for her skills as a portraitist, was married to Berthold Hatschek (1854-1941), a distinguished Austrian zoologist and anatomist and admirer of Haeckel’s work. While Marie’s brother, the world-famous pianist Moriz Rosenthal was able to escape from the Nazis and continue his career in the U.S., Marie and Berthold were not so lucky. Expelled from his academic position, Professor Hatschek suffered the further indignity of seeing his house looted and destroyed. Apparently, Marie was able to make it to Belgrade, but her fate after 1940 is unknown (for more on Rosenthal-Hatschek, see Armin Geuss, “Der achtzigjährige Ernst Haeckel—Ein Altersporträt von Marie Rosenthal-Hatschek,” Medizinhistorisches Journal, 15, 1/2 [1980]: 172-176, and Berthold Hatschek’s obituary, by Otto Storch, in Almanach für das Jahr 1949, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1950, 284-295).

The Haeckel portrait was among a handful of paintings Marie’s daughter was able to take with her to the U. S. in 1939. According to the daughter, Augusta Dessauer, the original sketch for the portrait was done shortly after Haeckel had fallen in his house, suffering a fracture of his upper thigh bone; the pain he undoubtedly felt might have contributed to the haunting expression on his face in the portrait and his awkward posture in the chair. Note Haeckel’s hands which are clutching, respectively, the chair’s armrest and the left side of his body. Still, this is not a portrait of a scientist at the end of his life. Surrounded by the tools of his trade—the faintly delineated books in the back, the large skull of a gorilla and the magnifying glass on the table to his left, this man seems ready to get up again, if only he could. His eyes are wide open, in the kind of permanent amazement that so wonderfully informs Haeckel’s art, while the left corner of his mouth, barely visible under the abundant Darwinesque facial hair, is slightly lifted, as if he were about to say something. Darwin’s “German shepherd,” as Haeckel has sometimes called, was not done yet.