Wilhelm Gallhof’s “Temptation of the Knight” gratifies the voyeurism of straight-laced Wilhelminian society with its patriarchal, conservative values. The artist retains the clichéd sexual roles of the period here: the woman is the submissive seductress, and the man the tough hero. This take on gender relations had already lost validity for many avant-garde artists by the turn of the century. Gallhof’s teacher Lovis Corinth (1858–1925), for example, dismantled erotic commonplaces with earthy realism, irony and humour, revealing women as assertive individuals in their own right.