Hans Unger is one of the central, albeit hitherto less recognized, representatives of Symbolism and Art Nouveau in Germany at the turn of the century. Originally trained as a decorative painter at the Royal Court Theater in Dresden, he began to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Friedrich Preller's landscape class, after which he became acquainted with the brighter and free palette of Impressionism on his travels through Italy and in exchange with the Goppeln School. Unger's artistic activity is fascinating for the variety of techniques and materials he employed between Symbolism, Impressionism and Art Nouveau, including poster art, illustrations for magazines such as "PAN" and "Jugend", stage curtains and mosaics. In 1897, the Dresden Gemäldegalerie bought his work "Die Muse", which earned him greater fame as a painter. In the same year, Unger went to Paris to study at the Académie Julian for six months. His contact with the works of French Symbolist painters such as Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and Gustave Moreau, whose dreamy, contemplative female figures would also influence Unger's work in the future, was probably formative, too. Unger often staged them in an allegorical context, for example as the sun, spring or nature. In the present painting, Unger combined elements of impressionist, pastose light painting, the beauty of female forms found in Art Nouveau and exotic echoes in a large, wall-filling format. The reduced pictorial content with the large areas of the body and the sky is composed of extremely lively, iridescent splashes of color. The female figure straightening her hair on the marble terrace appears enigmatic, in dialog with her reflection, admired by the bird of paradise with its long, elegant feathers. The stool with its shimmering mother-of-pearl inlays may have been inspired by Unger's trip to Egypt. Larger than life, the exotic Venus gains a sublime, monumental character. In Unger's work, the female figures are not individuals, but always symbols of the power and mysteriousness of the feminine. [KT]