When talking in terms of his personal life, Ernst described his childhood as "not particularly unhappy", but marked by some fairly traumatic incidents. These incidents, beginning as young as three years old, involved art, life, death, hallucinations, and magical powers. Writing in the third person, as Ernst often did, he said:
"Little Max's first contact with painting occurred in 1894 when he saw his father at work on a small water color entitled 'Solitude' which represented a hermit sitting in a beech-forest and reading a book. There was a terrifying, quiet atmosphere in this 'Solitude' and the manner it was treated. Every one of them had its individual solitary life . . . Max never forgot the enchantment and terror he felt, when a few days later his father conducted him for the first time into the forest."
The painting being cited by Ernst, which is also known as The Monk of Heisterbach; recent information has established that Philipp Ernst copied it with painstaking precision after a lithograph by Eugen Krüger (1832-76). Two aspects of Ernst's text merit emphasis: the father's practice of making copies after reproductions of art works and the perception of "individual solitary life" in each leaf. The concept of an animated nature has a long tradition in the history of art, but the young max Ernst claims to have encountered it firsthand in the local forest and in his father's painting of The Monk of Heisterback.
Another interesting, yet innocent event of Ernst's childhood, was when he ran away from home when he was only five years old. As told by Ernst, he joined a passing pilgrim procession. Apparently, the pilgrims were fascinated and enchanted by "Little Jesus Christ", who was just wearing a red nightshirt and carrying a toy whip. However, Max didn't stay with the pilgrims long; he dropped out after about a mile or so, so that he could take a ride on a train. The next day Max was picked up by a policeman a taken home; he appeased his father's fury by announcing that "he was sure he was little Jesus Christ".
This comment inspired his father (Phillip Ernst) to make a portrait of his son as a little Jesus-child, still dressed in the red nightshirt, but blessing the world with his right hand and bearing a cross (in place of the whip) in his left hand.
**Camfield, William A.
Another interesting, yet innocent event of Ernst's childhood, was when he ran away from home when he was only five years old. As told by Ernst, he joined a passing pilgrim procession. Apparently, the pilgrims were fascinated and enchanted by "Little Jesus Christ", who was just wearing a red nightshirt and carrying a toy whip. However, Max didn't stay with the pilgrims long; he dropped out after about a mile or so, so that he could take a ride on a train. The next day Max was picked up by a policeman a taken home; he appeased his father's fury by announcing that "he was sure he was little Jesus Christ".
This comment inspired his father (Phillip Ernst) to make a portrait of his son as a little Jesus-child, still dressed in the red nightshirt, but blessing the world with his right hand and bearing a cross (in place of the whip) in his left hand.
**Camfield, William A.
Max Ernst: Dada and the Dawn of Surrealism. Verlag, Munich, Houston: Prestel, the Menil Collection, 1993 (page 32)
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