Patrick Carnegy, Designs on the ‘Ring’: Unravelling the Mystery Surrounding Josef Hoffmann’s Original Sketches

Despite the voluminous documentation, we still have to struggle for a clear picture of what the Ring actually looked like at its Bayreuth premiere in 1876. There are posed studio portraits of the singers in their costumes, but no photographs of the actual scenery and production. The best visual evidence, until comparatively recently, was a set of fourteen monochrome photographs of the Viennese artist Josef Hoffmann’s stage designs. These had been taken by Victor Angerer at the artist’s request and published in a handsome portfolio as a memento. One of these sets was obtained by Wagner’s patron, King Ludwig II, and hung by him in the writing room of his hunting lodge on the Schach. The original designs had disappeared without trace. We could only guess how Hoffmann’s painterly interpretations of Wagner’s detailed instructions would have looked in colour.

This was the case until the early 1990s when some large Ring paintings by Hoffmann miraculously came to light in a castle on the Rhine.