In the summer of 1913, Lovis Corinth and his family traveled to St. Ulrich in the Grödner Valley to regain strength and find inspiration. The severe stroke he suffered in late 1911 marked a critical turning point in his career. He did not regard his impaired physical condition as a handicap; instead, he turned it into a source of greater artistic freedom. His painstaking love of detail gave way to an immediate, highly expressive conception of nature that would shape his late style. During this time, he created five impressive floral still lifes in Tyrol. On June 27, 1913, he announced his plans in a letter to Gertrud Mainzer: “Thank you very much for your card. So I would like to paint the floral still life […]. It’s very beautiful here, but a bit cold; that will probably get better in July.” (Lovis Corinth, 1913, quoted from: Thomas Corinth, Lovis Corinth. Eine Dokumentation, Tübingen 1979, p. 175). The present “Bouquet of Wildflowers in Tyrol” shows Corinth at the height of this period. A bulbous vase holds a wonderfully loose, seemingly haphazardly arranged bouquet of native meadow flowers that dominates the canvas. Set on a white tablecloth edged with decorative red stitching, the lush bouquet spreads to the edges of the pictorial space. Daisies, bellflowers, and other alpine plants glow in vibrant shades of yellow, pink, rich red, and violet. Through Corinth’s highly dynamic, impasto application of paint, firm contours dissolve into the dense interweaving of stems and petals; visible representational detail gives way to a pulsating composition of pure color and expressive gesture. Rather than losing himself in a dazzling wealth of detail, the East Prussian master captures, as it were, the archetypal form and pure substance of the floral splendor on the canvas. Using the most economical of means, he achieves a monumental effect. Here, Corinth’s unbridled joy in the intrinsic value and plastic substance of oil paint is palpable as rarely before. What Corinth intuitively threw onto the canvas in 1913, he formulated retrospectively in 1920 as follows: “Flowers, the most suitable subject for still lifes, are delicate and subtle in the forms of their blossoms and leaves. Consequently, their contours also appear very distinct. When the flowers are arranged in large numbers in a vase […], the depiction is the same for all varieties: the whole must be treated in large sections with specific, characteristic partial forms […].” (Lovis Corinth, Das Erlernen der Malerei. Ein Handbuch, Berlin 1920, p. 86) “Bouquet of Wildflowers in Tyrol” is the finest example of this approach. A deeply vibrant pictorial realm in which the ephemeral bloom of the Alpine meadows is immortalized through the brush's unbridled energy. [KA]