Red house on the lagoon

Details

With a photographic expertise by Julia Pechstein, Hamburg, dated 12.9.2023. The watercolour is listed as a work by Max Pechstein in the documentation of the Max Pechstein Copyright Association under the title “Rotes Haus am Haff”, 1919.

Provenance:

Formerly private property, Switzerland.

Description

– Idyllic coastal view with dynamic, sweeping image composition

– Created in Pechstein’s beloved summer residence Nidden on the Curonian Lagoon

– After the difficult years of the First World War, Pechstein saw his summer holiday in 1919 as a true ‘rebirth’

From 1909 to 1920, Max Pechstein spent his summer months in Nidden on the Curonian Spit in East Prussia. The long beach with its extensive dune landscape and the famous shifting sand dune, the fishing harbour with its picturesque fishermen’s huts and a quiet hinterland that was hardly noticed by bathers provided him with respite from the vibrant life in Berlin and at the same time offered an important source of inspiration for his art. Pechstein felt a close connection to the simple way of life of the fishermen and farmers and was artistically fascinated by the harsh Baltic Sea landscape with its clear Nordic coastal light and rapidly changing weather conditions.

Julia Pechstein, the artist’s granddaughter, writes in the expertise: “The watercolour belongs to a series of works that were all created during his summer stay in Nidden on the Curonian Spit in 1919. The view is of the lagoon. In a letter to his friend, the art historian Paul Fechter, dated 2 October 1919, Max Pechstein describes his feelings about this stay, the first trip after the First World War: ‘(…) truly yes, one could think I had died, I probably did, died in colours, canvases, pictures. Everything drowns in colours for me. My brain is filled only with images and the idea of what is to be painted chases me from one place to another. Never before have I experienced such a time, such a rebirth!”