Sale: 540 / Evening Sale, June 09. 2023 in Munich Lot 50

 

50
Hermann Max Pechstein
Boot bei aufgehender Sonne, 1949.
Oil on canvas
Estimate:
€ 130,000 / $ 140,400
Sold:
€ 241,300 / $ 260,604

(incl. surcharge)
Boot bei aufgehender Sonne. 1949.
Oil on canvas.
Soika 1949/14. Lower right signed and dated. Signed, dated, titled and inscribed on the reverse. 70.5 x 80 cm (27.7 x 31.4 in).
Made during Pechstein's summer stay in Ückeritz on the Baltic peninsula of Usedom. The artist's travelog contains a pencil sketch of the painting with a note from Sunday, August 14, 1949. [JS].
• The prominently staged rising sun is a symbol of Pechstein's new start in Berlin after WW II.
• The creation of the painting is documented by a pencil sketch and two entries in Pechstein's travelog for August 1949: "[..] finally got lucky to paint my first sunrise down by the sea [..]"
• Fascinating lighting in the expressionist, glowing palette characteristic of the "Brücke" era.
• With an exhibition history that goes back to 1950: at 'Haus der Kunst', Munich in 1950, as well as part of the grand Pechstein traveling exhibitions in 1996/97 at, among others, the Brücke Museum Berlin and the Kunsthalle Kiel in 2011
.

PROVENANCE: Private collection Bonn (ca. 1950s - 1980s).
Private collection Frankfurt a. Main (until 2000).
Hermann Gerlinger Collection, Würzburg (since 2000, with the collector's stamp on the stretcher, Lugt 6032).

EXHIBITION: Große Kunstausstellung München, Haus der Kunst, Sektion Neue Gruppe, July 13 - October 8, 1950, cat. no. 831 (with black-and-white illu., p. 88).
Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts aus Privatbesitz in Bonn und Umgebung, Haus der Städtischen Kunstsammlungen, Bonn, May 21 - July 30, 1963, no. 92.
Max Pechstein. Sein malerisches Werk, Brücke-Museum Berlin, September 22, 1996 - Jannuary 1, 1997; Kunsthalle Tübingen, January 11 - April 6, 1997; Kunsthalle Kiel, April 27 -June 15, 1997, cat. no. 162 (with illu.).
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).
Max Pechstein. Ein Expressionist aus Leidenschaft. Retrospektive, Kunsthalle Kiel, September 19, 2010 - January 9, 2011; Kunstforum Ostdeutsche Galerie, Regensburg, March 6 - June 26, 2011; Kunstmuseum Ahlen, July 10 - October 30, 2011, cat. no. 227 (with illu., p. 265).
Buchheim Museum, Bernried (permanent loan from the Hermann Gerlinger Collection, 2017-2022).

LITERATURE: Ernst Thiele (ed.), Postkarten zur deutschen Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts. Eine Bibliographie des deutschen Kunstrates e. V., Cologne 1958, p. 78.
Max Pechstein, Ostsee-Bilder. Gemälde, Zeichnungen, Photografien, Ostdeutsche Galerie, Regensburg, July 9 - August 31, 1981; Stiftung Pommern, Kiel, September 19 - October 8, 1981, no. 27 (with black-and-white illu., p. 65).
Paul R. Proskauer, Die Suche nach dem Primitiven. Pechsteins Suche nach dem unverfälschten Leben, in: New Yorker Staats-Zeitung, January 17, 1997 (with black-and-white illu.).
Peter Thurmann, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff und Max Pechstein in ihren künstlerischen Beziehungen zu Vincent van Gogh und Henri Matisse, in: Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Ein Maler des 20. Jahrhunderts. Gemälde, Aquarelle und Zeichnungen von 1905 bis 1972, Dortmund 2001/02, p.193 (with black-and-white illu. 8).
Hermann Gerlinger, Katja Schneider (eds.), Die Maler der Brücke. Inventory catalog Hermann Gerlinger Collection, Halle (Saale) 2005, p. 404, SHG no. 800 (with illu.).

"Sunday August 14, 1949: What a beautiful summer day. Made a few sketches on the beach this morning, went swimming and lay in the sun on the beach until noon. After lunch, I had my fishermans food for the second time - flounder with potatoes, I just lay in front of the house and added corrections to my sketches a little later [..]."

Max Pechstein, transl. entry in the Ückeritz travelog below the pencil sketch for "Boot bei aufgehender Sonne", August 14, 1949, quoted from: Soika. Max Pechstein, vol. II, p. 37, illu. 8.37.

"[..] finally got lucky and made my first sunrise down on the beach, a boat picture. It was for the rough sea that the fishermen coud not launch their boats, which was bad for them, but good for me, as it gave me leisure to work. I went down to the beach early at four thirty and this time not for nothing."
Max Pechstein, transl. entry in the Ückeritz travelog, August 19, 1949, quoted from: Hermann Gerlinger, Die Maler der Brücke. Inventory catalog, Halle (Saale) 2005, p. 404.

Even in later years, Pechstein revisited the idea of confronting the sea with artistic powers in drawings and paintings. With "Boot bei aufgehender Sonne" Pechstein 'portrayed' a rowing boat equipped with landing nets and all kinds of fishing utensils lying calmly and lonely on the sand, ready to go; it just has to be pushed over the sand into the water. The painting manner that he developed in Ückeritz on the island of Usedom in August and September 1949 seems to reflect the overall atmosphere of the reconstruction of post-war Berlin. In 1945, Pechstein returned to Berlin from the former Pomeranian, now Polish village of Leba. After a short imprisonment, he not only faced the ruins of his bombed-out studio, the loss of pictures destroyed during the war, but also the loss of his livelihood through the National Socialist’s cultural policies. Pechstein's art was no longer visible in public, it was non-existent. He managed to get a new start with the appointment to teach at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin under the direction of Carl Hofer. With his first summer stay by the sea in 1949, Pechstein felt that his strength was coming back, he was able to connect emotionally to his stays on the Curonian Spit. Nevertheless, Usedom cannot be compared with the epic simpleness and primeval expanse of the East Prussian peninsula. But the loss brought him closer to his own world, closer to Europe, also by returning to the life of a painter in this small place on the sheltered coast. The youthful character of Pechstein's style can thus be recognized in this painting, comparable to the moods that once characterized his works made in Nida. Pechstein's typical color worlds glow and sparkle in this painting, which embrace and intertwine as if they were of their own accord, in order to ennoble the beauty of the motif. In their mixtures, they unfold the intensive, artistic examination of van Gogh and the Fauves around Matisse, whose works Pechstein studied attentively in Paris in 1908 and which had left a deep impression as 'possibilities of artistic expression'. Executed with a lively brushwork, Pechstein's "Boot mit aufgehender Sonne" compares to Maurice de Vlaminck's paintings made on the Seine near Chatou in 1905/1906 and to André Derain's paintings of the London Thames from the same period. In powerful contrast, the fishing boat lies on the sand in an unusual view from above, drawn in a few blackened blue colors with yellow and red contours.

Pechstein knows the type of boat, the curved shape and the volume of the heavy hull are familiar to him, with carefully placed brushstrokes, he makes its character recognizable and thus takes it out of the picture as a whole. The clear morning with a bright sun mitigates the impression of danger, and does not tell the observer anything about the hard life of the fishermen and their willingness to accept the challenges of the elements. We can well allege that Pechstein consciously staged a metaphorical exaggeration of the barge pulled ashore. He lived with the fishermen and villagers and set them a monument with this magnificent piece in radiant colors staged in a Baltic landscape. Throughout his life, Pechstein was fascinated by the mutability of the sea. After his return to Berlin from Paris, and with the discovery of the islands in the east, it found a magnificent expression in the artist's work. [MvL]



50
Hermann Max Pechstein
Boot bei aufgehender Sonne, 1949.
Oil on canvas
Estimate:
€ 130,000 / $ 140,400
Sold:
€ 241,300 / $ 260,604

(incl. surcharge)