Monkeys and martyrs don't usually mix in polite company — but both hold a place of honor in "Gabriel von Max: Be-tailed Cousins and Phantasms of the Soul," the intriguing new show at the Frye Art Museum curated by Frye director Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker.

Gabriel von Max (1840-1915) is an odd case: a world-famous artist in his day who for decades was dismissed and almost forgotten; a self-described scientist who built up his own sizable natural-history and anthropological museum, yet had an abiding interest in occult phenomena as well.

His most powerful works dive deep into psychosexual turmoil, with a particular focus on the limbo between life and death. His pale, sometimes peculiarly discolored female beauties often seem to have risen from the grave — or at least conducted their modeling careers in the morgue.

His weakest works from his later years — "countless Mädchenköpfe, or 'girls' heads,' " as art historian Susanne Böller implies — may well have diluted his reputation with their sentimental idealization of young females. Mass distributed in commercial reproductions, they wore out their welcome as art fashions moved on.

Birnie Danzker's aim in this, the first solo show ever dedicated to von Max in the U.S., is to restore him to prominence in this country, concentrating on works that, once seen, stay branded on your memory.

Her starting point is the painting that kick-started his career when he was a 26-year-old art student, "The Christian Martyr" (in the Frye's permanent collection). It made him an international star, but it also started him off on a note of compromise. His original intention was to paint Saint Wilgefortis, the crucified female martyr who grew a beard to avoid getting married. His professor, Carl Theodor von Piloty, advised him to change saints and drop the facial hair.

Piloty may have had a point. The final painting drew a huge response, not just in exhibits but in circulated reproduction. (Art scholar Helmut Huss notes that von Max was one of the first artists to tap into the market for photographic reproductions of their work.)

From this early high point, Birnie Danzker traces the artist's reputation over the course of five decades in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. One purpose of the exhibit, she said during a recent walk-through of the show, is to present "a morality tale about the vagaries of taste and the dangers of de-accessioning."

Case in point: "The Anatomist" (1869), the centerpiece of the Frye show, which introduced American audiences to his work when it went on display in Brooklyn, Chicago and Philadelphia.

By any measure it's an atmospheric and unnerving piece: a morbid symphony of shadow and light. Behind the palely lit corpse of a young woman, the anatomist of the title sits almost consumed in darkness. With one hand he lifts her shroud, about to expose her naked flesh. His other hand is positioned under his chin, in a pensive pose.

Forty years after painting this oil on canvas, von Max told an interviewer that the male figure "is studying in perplexity the question — the spirit, whence came it, whither has it gone?" Now in the collection of the Neue Pinakothek in Munich, the painting's American "career" came to an ignoble end in 1953, when it was auctioned off from Oberlin College's collection for a mere $40. That price might be reasonable for one of his much-duplicated Mädchenköpfe. But for this masterpiece it's appalling.

Just as powerful is his "The Ecstatic Virgin Anna Katharina Emmerich."

Like "The Anatomist," it toured the world, including a stop at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. An oil on canvas also on loan from the Neue Pinakothek, it's a feverish portrait of a nun who lived from 1774 to 1824. Emmerich was a "stigmatic, mystic, visionary and ecstatic," Birnie Danzker tells us, "who was beatified in 2004 by Pope John Paul II."

What she and the art historians she cites don't mention is that the painting also deals, whether consciously or unconsciously, with some extreme distress caused by sublimated sexual desire. The crucifix on the unfortunate virgin's lap couldn't be much more phallic in shape or position, while the candle on the upper left echoes it, albeit it with the suggestion of a spiritual glow.

"Across the board, there's a strong sexual element in the paintings," Birnie Danzker acknowledges when queried about it, "and it's cast in the form of religious narrative."

Just as visceral are some of his illustrations for an edition of Goethe's "Faust." The best of these black-and-white wood engravings explore sinister territory, most notably in "Mephisto Dressed in Faust's Robes," a dusky, spooky rendering of a corrupt and predatory face. Interestingly, in an oil on canvas of the same title, Faust's tempter is more dapper and attractive in appearance — although his curled, clawlike right hand still gives his true nature away.

The two "Mephisto" pieces, along with an undated and untitled oil on canvas of a bearded old man, make you wish he had devoted more time to troubled males and less to idealized young females. So does the startled, aged Darwin-like title figure in "The Vivisector," a painting protesting against the dissection of live animals in the name of science.

One female portrait, however — "Study for The Lord's Prayer" depicting the artist's second wife, Ernestine Harlander — stands in welcome contrast to the sometimes bland young women who turn up as saints in his work. Here he delivers a very specific personality skeptically looking heavenward, lovingly observed for what she is rather than what she symbolizes. "Mater Dolorosa," a stark portrait of a surprisingly young and clear-eyed Mary assessing her son's crucifixion (off-canvas), does something similar.

And then there are the monkeys. The artist at times shared his home with up to 14 of them, and he painted them frequently. "Bitter Experiences," an oil on canvas dating from after 1900, may be the strongest. It depicts a capuchin monkey with its eyes lidded and its mouth dropped in a lax grimace after biting into a lemon. The brush technique is dazzling, and the expression and stance of the disappointed creature a little creepy — perhaps because it's painted from a photograph of von Max's pet after it had died.

"Gabriel von Max: Be-tailed Cousins and Phantasms of the Soul" is also the title of a handsome new book by Birnie Danzker, which includes reproductions of several paintings not in the show that make her case for von Max's eerie brilliance even stronger.

"Judas Iscariot" (1877), "The Seeress of Prevorst in High Sleep" (1892) and "Monkeys as Art Critics" (1889) look splendid in reproduction. There's a chance that the first two, from the National Gallery of Prague, will make it into the exhibit by August, with any luck, if releases from the Czech Republic can be obtained.

Keep your fingers crossed.

Michael Upchurch: mupchurch@seattletimes.com