Gabriel von Max is best known for dramatic paintings of beautiful women either dead or in spiritual rapture. However, Charles and Emma Frye, who collected Max’s artwork in depth, were drawn to his quieted compositions of women in repose and contemplation. Soap Bubbles, in which a young woman gazes into a hand-held mirror as a putto blows soap bubbles in her direction, offers an allegory for the fleeting nature of beauty and life. Max, a scholar of spiritualism, Darwinism, occultism, and mystical traditions, also taught historical painting at the Academy of Munich from 1879 to 1883. Soap Bubbles is on view in the exhibition Gaze: Vision, Desire, and Difference in the Frye Collections (August 30, 2008 – January 4, 2009).