Erich Heckel's landscapes are always atmospheric images with a strong radiance. In the summer of 1912, he traveled with Siddi to the Baltic peninsula Hiddensee, where the two met E. L. Kirchner. On this trip they visited Stralsund, the oldest port city in Pomerania. Heckel shows how the approaching night reflected in the sky and on the water, with the buildings glowing and the orange quay wall as a guiding path. The steps of the person on the other side become audible in the picture. With his palette, Erich Heckel revisited works from earlier “Brücke” years, color fields in blue, orange, yellow and green, buildings and masts reflect on the water, green-blue clouds move above the scene. In the powerful, intense atmospheric picture, he transferred the colors of the “Brücke” from around 1908 to a denser and much calmer composition. Accordingly, it is little surprising that the painting was shown at Fritz Gurlitt's "Brücke" exhibition the year it was created, followed by exhibitions in Frankfurt am Main and at Galerie Cometer in Hamburg. Two years later it featured in Heckel's solo exhibition at the Rheinische Kunstsalon in Cologne. The series of exhibitions continued in the 1960s, when it was shown at, among others, the important exhibitions on German Expressionism in Florence and at Tate Gallery in London.

Last but not least, the painting deserves special attention because it has a precious piece on its reverse: "Vor gelbem Tuch" (In Front of Yellow Cloth) from 1908. Two figures, one undressed, one in a blue robe, sit in front of a yellow, wide-spread cloth or tent. Erich Heckel repeatedly painted on the reverse side of his canvases. One reason certainly was a lack of material, which is also true for "Vor gelbem Tuch". Interestingly, he did not paint the reverse side of this work in white, as he did with most other canvases. "In the case of Heckel, the extent to which the portraits on the back can be classified as failed attempts is extremely controversial and must certainly be assessed separately for each of these works. The best example of this certainly is the portrait of 'Schlafender Pechstein' (Pechstein Sleeping) from 1910, recovered in 1955, it is considered a main work of early German Expressionism today." (Caroline v. Saint-George, Einblick in die Maltechnik Heckels, in: A. Hünecke, E. Heckel. Catalogue raisonné of paintings, Munich 2017) This is how "Vor gelbem Tuch" from 1908 and "Schiffe im Kanal" from 1912 are united on one canvas as two works of equal quality from respective peaks of the "Brücke". [EH]