Recto: View of children playing and a carriage drawn by white horses seen from Weyerberg – Verso: Bouquet of autumn foliage in a milk jug with an apple

Details

This work is registered with the Otto-Modersohn-Museum, Fischerhude. We are thankful to Rainer Noeres, Otto Modersohn Museum Fischerhude/Ottersberg, for the information he has kindly provided for cataloguing this lot.

Provenance: private ownership Southern Germany; Bolland & Marotz, Bremen 19./20.4.1985, lot 565; Auktionshaus Weser, Bremen 12.10.2020, lot 3000; Van Ham, Cologne, 2.12.2020, lot 24; private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia.

Description

• Modersohn is one of the best-known German landscape painters and co-founder of the Worpswede artists’ colony • The Worpswede Weyerberg is an important motif in Modersohn’s work
• Since the 1930s, flower still lifes and especially autumnal bouquets were popular subject with the artist

In 1908, Otto Modersohn moved from Worpswede to the village of Fischerhude around 20 kilometers away, and lived there in his new home until his death in 1943. In addition to motifs from his numerous study trips, the Teufelsmoor and its characteristic landscape with the Worpsweder Weyerberg remained an important motif in his works. In addition to landscapes, floral still lifes had been a part of Modersohn’s oeuvre since the 1930s: spring flowers and meadow flowers, often autumn bouquets, sometimes depicted at twilight or at night, arranged in vases, glasses and jugs against simple backgrounds. “They are becoming ever richer, more fantastic, more mysterious,” the artist noted enthusiastically in November 1933, “such a bouquet is a world of wonder, more fantastic than the nature out there, a fairytale world, a fairy kingdom. I also like to paint with electric light (…) Simple colours, broken, indifferent, mild, muted, delicate, rich in nuances, not colourful, uniform, a dominant colour, a harmony – without effects (…)”.