So much anti-German feeling erupted during World War I that the once august reputation of Gabriel von Max (1840-1915) fell into steep decline. (World War II didn’t help either.) But lately he’s climbed back into favor, like Albert von Keller (featured at the Frye last fall), a fellow member of the Munich Secession movement. Von Max’s first dedicated museum exhibition in the U.S. is subtitled “Be-tailed Cousins and Phantasms of the Soul,” a mouthful. But his was a full life, including two wives, several kids, a hoard of anthropological artifacts (including Native American costumes), and many pet monkeys. In 36 paintings and 100-odd supporting objects on display, von Max emerges as a strange amalgam of contradictory 19th-century currents. He was fascinated with Darwin and naturalism, yet he also painted many religious scenes (of ecstatic/dying saints, especially) and even conducted seances with fellow dabblers in the supernatural. In his best work, like The Anatomist, he’s fixated on the uncanny boundary between life and death, where pallid bodies retain their form, though emptied of spirit. And if that doesn’t do it for you, there are always the monkeys. Look—there’s one trying to play the piano! How cute. BRIAN MILLER

Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays-Sundays, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.; Thursdays, 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Starts: July 9. Continues through Oct. 30, 2011