Sale: 530 / Evening Sale / The Hermann Gerlinger Collection, June 10. 2022 in Munich Lot 17

 

17
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Zwei am Tisch sitzende Mädchen, 1910.
Watercolor over black chalks
Estimate:
€ 70,000 / $ 75,600
Sold:
€ 87,500 / $ 94,500

(incl. surcharge)
Zwei am Tisch sitzende Mädchen. 1910.
Watercolor over black chalks.
Verso with the estate stamp of the Kunstmuseums Basel (Lugt 1570 b) and the hand-written registration number "A Dre/Bf 16". On smooth creme wove paper. 44.9 x 34.8 cm (17.6 x 13.7 in), size of sheet. [CH].

• Particularly strong and fresh colors and in good condition.
• Intimate drawing from the artist’s Dresden studio.
• The work shows one of the artist's most important models, Lina Franziska Fehrmann, called Fränzi.
• The special motif of a girl sitting on a carpet in the artist's studio can also be found in important paintings like "Nackte Mädchen unterhalten sich" (Gordon 96, Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf) and "Nacktes Mädchen hinter Vorhang, Fränzi" (Gordon 154, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam)
.

The work is documented at the Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Archive, Wichtrach/Bern.

PROVENANCE: Artist's estate (Davos 1938, Kunstmuseum Basel 1946).
Stuttgarter Kunstkabinett Roman Norbert Ketterer, Stuttgart (1954).
Galerie R. N. Ketterer, Campione d'Italia (1967).
Galerie Henze & Ketterer, Wichtrach/Bern.
Collection Hermann Gerlinger, Würzburg (with the collector stamp, acquired from the above in 2001).

EXHIBITION: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner zum 120. Geburtstag. Gemälde und Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Galerie Henze & Ketterer, Wichtracht/Bern 2000, cat. no. 11
Kunstmuseum Moritzburg, Halle an der Saale (permanent loand from Collection Hermann Gerlinger, 2001-2017).
Expressiv! Die Künstler der Brücke. Die Sammlung Hermann Gerlinger, Albertina, Vienna, June 1 - August 26, 2007, cat. no. 141, pp. 222f. (with illu.).
Inspiration des Fremden. Die Brücke-Maler und die außereuropäische Kunst, Stiftung Moritzburg, Kunstmuseum des Landes Sachsen-Anhalt, Halle (Saale), November 13, 2016 - January 29, 2017, cat. no. 42 (with illu. on p. 71).
Buchheim Museum, Bernried (permanent loan from Collection Hermann Gerlinger, 2017-2022).

LITERATURE: Stuttgarter Kunstkabinett, Stuttgart, 36th auction, 1961, lot 203.
Galeria R. N. Ketterer, Campione d'Italia 1967, cat. no. 85.
Hermann Gerlinger, Katja Schneider (editor), Die Maler der Brücke. Inventory catalog Collection Hermann Gerlinger, Halle (Saale) 2005, p. 312, SHG no. 708 (with illu.).
Brückenschlag: Gerlinger - Buchheim! Museumsführer durch die "Brücke"-Sammlungen von Hermann Gerlinger und Lothar-Günther Buchheim, Feldafing 2017, p. 134 (with illu. on p. 135).

In a letter to Heckel from April 1910, Kirchner summed up Pechstein's memory of the first encounter with the young models: "It's quite good here now. Marzella feels at home now and is developing fine features. We have become quite familiar, lie on the carpet and play. There is a great charm in such a pure woman, hints of what might drive you crazy. Much more awesome than with the older girls. Freer, without losing the finished woman. Perhaps some things are more finished with her than in the more mature, and already perishes. The wealth is certainly greater now. Today she brought her friend. 12 years old has a sister of 15. I hope that will be something for us." (Ernst Ludwig Kirchner to Erich Heckel, around April 1910, published in: Annemarie Dube-Heynig, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Postkarten und Briefe an Erich Heckel im Altonaer Museum in Hamburg, Cologne 1984, no. 31. ) Kirchner's fascination with the expressiveness of the artist child is clearly noticeable, carefree with slumbering femininity in front of the artist's eyes and knowing how to move confidently and certainly provocatively.

There are many stories about the existence of Fränzi and Marcella, including encounters of an erotic nature with the artists, which one can guess from the countless sketches, drawings, watercolors and the paintings. They are so numerous that not only book chapters but an entire exhibition was dedicated to this girl and her sister. (Der Blick auf Fränzi und Marcella, Zwei Modelle der Brücke-Künstler Heckel, Kirchner und Pechstein, published by Norbert Nobis, exhibition cat. Sprengel Museum, Hanover, Hanover 2010) But who is Marzella (also Marcella)? Franzi's older sister? Who was Fränzi's girlfriend and her older sister that Kirchner tells Heckel about? Kirchner, Heckel and Pechstein were probably already drawing and painting two young girls in the summer of 1909, both at the Moritzburg ponds and in Heckel and Kirchner's studios. In any case, here there are two girls sitting undressed at a table and talking. They are shown in front of a rich figurative background and the cloth widths that adorn Kirchner's studio.

The figure outlined behind the two girls is not a sculpture, but, as Wolfgang Henze describes in his monograph with catalog raisonné of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's sculptures, it is a nude relief for a "bench sloped on three sides, round and open at the front, painted with figures" (Wolfgang Henze, Die Plastik Ernst Ludwig Kirchners. Monographie mit Werkverzeichnis, Wichtrach/Bern 2002, p. 87 and p. 309). In this sense, it is a non-freestanding sculpture with a face, thick hair and a female upper body. This studio chair, carved and painted by Kirchner, appears as a prop for the first time in these drawings with Fränzi (Marcella?), among other things, is found again in other drawings and pastels and dominates the colorful painting "Fränzi vor geschnitztem Stuhl“ (Fränzi in front of a carved chair) from 1909/10, which today is in the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection in Madrid. The fact that Kirchner varied this piece of furniture depending on how it was used as a prop, for example here in this watercolor, letting the viewer assume that it is a sculpture from Africa he had discovered in the Ethnological Museum, shows how his mostly self-created pieces of furniture found their way into his compositions. This was also illustrated by a photograph of a lost painting that shows the naked Fränzi in profile in front of this chair. [MvL]



17
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Zwei am Tisch sitzende Mädchen, 1910.
Watercolor over black chalks
Estimate:
€ 70,000 / $ 75,600
Sold:
€ 87,500 / $ 94,500

(incl. surcharge)