Sale: 540 / Evening Sale, June 09. 2023 in Munich Lot 48

 

48
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
Leuchtturm mit Mondsichel, 1922.
Watercolor and ink brush
Estimate:
€ 40,000 / $ 43,200
Sold:
€ 63,500 / $ 68,580

(incl. surcharge)
Leuchtturm mit Mondsichel. 1922.
Watercolor and ink brush.
Signed in lower right. On cardboard. 49.2 x 60.5 cm (19.3 x 23.8 in), the full sheet.
[KT].
• The striking lighthouse of Jershöft, where the artist repeatedly stayed, was an important motif in the 1920s.
• With these watercolors, the artist explored an entirely new expressive pictorial language in the landscape depiction.
• Characterized by particularly radiant and unusually intensive colors: the iridescent polar lights appear visionary and magic
.

The work is documented in the archive of the Karl and Emy Schmidt-Rottluff Foundation, Berlin.

PROVENANCE:
Hermann Gerlinger Collection, Würzburg (with the collector's stamp Lugt 6032).

EXHIBITION:
Schleswig-Holsteinisches Landesmuseum Schloss Gottorf, Schleswig (permanent loan from the Hermann Gerlinger Collection, 1995-2001).
Kunstmuseum Moritzburg, Halle an der Saale (permanent loan from the Hermann Gerlinger Collection, 2001-2017).
Expressiv! Die Künstler der Brücke. Die Sammlung Hermann Gerlinger, Albertina, Vienna, June 1 - August 26, 2007, cat. no. 62 (with illu.).
Buchheim Museum, Bernried (permanent loan from the Hermann Gerlinger Collection, 2017-2022).
Brückenschlag: Gerlinger–Buchheim, Buchheim Museum, Bernried, October 28, 2017 - February 25, 2018, pp. 364-365 (with illu.).

LITERATURE:
Heinz Spielmann (ed.), Die Maler der Brücke. Sammlung Hermann Gerlinger, Stuttgart 1995, p. 398-399, SHG no. 695 (with illu.).
Hermann Gerlinger, Katja Schneider (eds.), Die Maler der Brücke. Inventory catalog Hermann Gerlinger Collection, Halle (Saale) 2005, p. 99, SHG no. 208 (with illu.).

Lighthouses, dominating coasts and landscapes with their strangely elongated architecture, exerted a great attraction on the "Brücke" artists. Kirchner not only dedicated several works to the Staberhuk lighthouse on Fehmarn, he even moved into an apartment with the lighthouse keeper during his summer stays from 1912 to 1914. In the landscapes Heckel's made in Ostend during the First World War, the lighthouse sometimes dominated the motif. And lighthouses can also be discovered in Pechstein's Nida landscapes from 1911 onward. In this view of the striking lighthouse in Jershöft in Pomerania (today the Polish seaside resort of Jaroslawiec), Karl Schmidt-Rottluff surpasses his former artist friends in the vitality of the execution. The former student of architecture is visibly impressed by the unusual design of the tower and expresses this feeling in an enthusiastic and grotesque way. In the summer of 1920, Schmidt-Rottluff left Berlin for the fishing village of Jershöft, with this unusual lighthouse as a distinctive sign, for the first time: a brick tower built in 1865, some 35 meters tall. (Ill.) In one of his first paintings he had made there in 1920, the tower appears along with a windmill, in between a farmstead under a moving sky. Two years later, he created this watercolor inspired by a natural phenomenon: Schmidt-Rottluff draws the striking landmark with a blue-colored light source on a moonlit night from a distance, embedded in a dune landscape, surrounded by a few trees and a remarkable architecture that stretches towards the light of the sky like mushrooms attracted by the light of the moon at night. But the scene is not solely illuminated by the white crescent moon, the deep blue night sky is also illuminated by the astonishing and surreal spectacle of the energetic northern lights, which move back and forth with the winds in the atmosphere. Boldly and with a magnificent watercolor technique, Schmidt-Rottluff allows us to participate in this intense and mysterious natural spectacle. [MvL]



48
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
Leuchtturm mit Mondsichel, 1922.
Watercolor and ink brush
Estimate:
€ 40,000 / $ 43,200
Sold:
€ 63,500 / $ 68,580

(incl. surcharge)