This early painting by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was created in 1906. It depicts a small bridge over the Prießnitz River, which flows from Radebeul through a sparse wooded landscape to Dresden-Albertstadt and mouths into the Elbe near the Rosengarten. This enchanting painting takes us back to the early summer of 1906. A shimmering dance of sunlit foliage, broken up by a glimpse of the sky—suggested in pale, light tones—and a bridge spanning a round arch. To the right,s a sloping hillside rises; its foot is likely at the artist's vantage point. And to the left, there's a gentle slope down to the shallow water, with a boy on the bank and a girl standing in the water. They blend into the green of the leaves, the blue of the bridge arch, and the pale orange of the light reflections on the water. This early painting, listed as number 14 in Gordon’s catalog raisonné, is one of the last in a small group of works still influenced by Seurat and Art Nouveau and not owned by a museum.

The painting “Parksee” (Gordon 13) belongs to the Albertina in Vienna, while “Die Lehmgrube” (Gordon 15) is part of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection in Madrid. A third painting, Blumenbeete (Gordon 12), from this small group was part of the Gerlinger Collection until December 2022 and is now in a German private collection.


Studies in Dresden—Founding of “Die Brücke”
Watercolor landscape sketches by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner from his youth, preserved in early sketchbooks, show the young artist’s ability to capture his observations with confidence through a deft choice of atmospheric elements. As is well known, Kirchner began his training as an architect at the Royal Saxon Technical University in Dresden in 1901, majoring in Building Construction. His fellow student Fritz Bleyl proved to be his counterpart: an architecture student who was actually more drawn to the fine arts. His course selection clearly illustrated this preference: “More than a third of the college courses that Kirchner took were not architecture-related, such as ‘The Dresden Museums and Their Art Treasures,’ ‘19th-Century Sculpture,’ ‘The Study of Forms in Antiquity,’ etc. Under Karl Weichhardt, Kirchner studied ‘figure drawing after live models’ in the studio and outdoors, albeit still in a strictly academic manner.” (Meike Hoffman, “Die Arbeit vor dem Motiv”: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in Dresden 1901–1911, in: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.) Gemälde, Aquarelle, Zeichnungen und Druckgraphik. Kunstforum Wien / Kunsthalle München, 1998–1999, Munich 1998, p. 9)

After completing his intermediate diploma, he went to Munich to study at the Royal Technical University for one semester. At the time, Munich was an Art Nouveau center and well known for its avant-garde artistic circles. In addition to studying architecture, he enrolled in the “Teaching and Experimental Studios for Applied and Fine Arts” run by Wilhelm von Debschitz and Herman Obrist, where he was introduced to the art of woodcut. What proved most significant about this stay, however, may have been the exposure to theoretical ideas he gained from Hermann Obrist’s weekly Thursday evening lectures on questions of art and culture. “The Munich bohemian scene at that time was largely shaped by the circles of poets and philosophers around Stefan George and Ludwig Klages, who called for artistic creation to spring from an inner necessity.” (Meike Hoffmann, op. cit., p. 10). This intellectual world later found expression not only in the work of “Die Brücke” but also in the theories of Expressionism’s second major group, “Der Blaue Reiter.”

In 1904, Kirchner returned to Dresden and earned his architecture degree a year later. Before he received his diploma, he founded the “Brücke” artists’ group on June 7, 1905, with Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. The “Brücke” manifesto was carved into wood by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and presented on a double sheet bearing the “Brücke” emblem: “With faith in progress, in a new generation of both creators and connoisseurs, we call upon you all: Come together (sic), and as the youth who carries the future, let us secure our freedom of action and of life against the well-established old forces. Those who express what drives them to create in a direct and unadulterated way belong among us.”

The woodcut accompanying this program likely depicts the same bridge as our painting: still stylistically rooted in Art Nouveau and composed ornamentally, a bridge arch spans between dense tree canopies.

An ink-brush drawing previously dated “around 1906” bears the title “Waldweg zum Haus” (Forest Path to the House) and is inscribed “Park am Prisnitzpark um 1906” (Park at Prisnitzpark around 1906) by a hand other than the artist’s on the reverse. In his 2005 collection catalog, Herrmann Gerlinger describes this drawing as “an abstract, freely rhythmic structure, driven by personal impetus.” Our painting has been in the same collection since 1963, and it is therefore not surprising that this great connoisseur of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s oeuvre refers only to a painting created in 1907 in connection with this drawing. It is important to note that Ernst Ludwig Kirchner painted in Prisnitzpark on several occasions.


Prisnitz Park
The park is located near Albertstadt, which was developed as a large garrison for the Saxon Army on previously unused land beginning in 1873. As part of this project, the Dresden Garrison Hospital was also built and opened in 1879. At the time, it was the most modern military hospital in the German Empire. Since it was still listed as Reserve Military Hospital I during World War I, we can still get a sense of the park’s serene landscape today through the picture postcards that were beginning to appear then. One can easily imagine that Ernst Ludwig Kirchner visited the park to experience the interplay of light, foliage, and water. The young Kirchner captured the immediacy of the moment “directly and unadulterated,” reflecting “what drives him to create,” in keeping with the “Brücke” manifesto, which was likely written around the same time.