The lady in mauve
| The Lady in Mauve |
|---|
| Lyonel Feininger , 1922 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 100.5 × 80.5 cm |
|
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum , Madrid
Link to the picture |
The Lady in Mauve (The Lady in Mauve) is the title of an Expressionist painting by Lyonel Feininger from 1922 . It belongs to the holdings of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid .
Description and picture history
The painting The Lady in Mauve is executed in the portrait format 100.5 cm × 80.5 cm using the painting technique oil on canvas . The painter's signature is on the lower left: Feininger 22 . It bears the inventory number 543 (1964.12).
The picture shows an elegant woman in a mauve-colored dress with a hat and a long, thin stick of the same color, which she stretches backwards with her right hand. The back is turned towards the viewer, the woman's face turns over her left shoulder towards the viewer. The abstractly painted buildings on both sides of the woman suggest an evening stroll through the city. They recede in color and size, while the use of cubist shapes connects the figure and the background . There is also a correspondence between the blue in the lady's hat and the blue surface of the sky above her. The lady's clothes are composed entirely of flat, geometric shapes in the color mauve, on the face the red lips stand out against the pallor of the only hinted at face. The curve of the skirt is indicated by a circular section in a delicate yellow.
The picture is based on a small drawing entitled “La Belle” (The Beautiful), which Feininger probably made in 1906. It was published in 1907 in the French magazine Le Témoin (The Witness) (II, 1907, No. 20) under the changed title "L'Impatiente" (The Impatient) as a caricature with the caption: "Il m'a dit:» Je serai là à 8 heures "... il en est dix, je vais attendre un peu, mais à minuit ... je pars ..." (He told me: "I'll be there at 8 o'clock" ... well it's ten, I'll wait a little longer, but at midnight ... I'll go ...).
In the more naturalistic drawing, the beautiful woman walks through a nightly illuminated Parisian street with tall houses in high pumps . On the right side of the picture a smaller house with a gable roof can be seen in the foreground , which indicates a certain homeliness by showing the viewer its front side with the entrance door and a curtain-hung window. The drawing is in the possession of the Busch-Reisinger Museum in Cambridge (Massachusetts) and is registered there under the object number BRLF.1016.129. It was donated to the museum by Theodore Lux Feininger .
interpretation
The curator Ulrich Luckhardt combines the structure of the painting with the rigor of the musical form of the fugue . Feininger was working on the composition of six fugues for piano at the time the picture was created . The structure of the picture from a harmoniously coordinated composition of recurring forms such as semicircles , pyramids and rectangles reminds of the recurrence of the theme in the musical fugue. The mutual penetration of the individual motifs from which the picture is built and the counterpoint of the light-dark contrasts make one think of the shape of the joint. He describes the work as the climax in Feininger's striving for harmony and perfection.
Provenance
The picture came from Julia Feininger, New York via the youngest son Theodore Lux Feininger and then the art dealer Roman Norbert Ketterer in 1964 in the possession of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection in Lugano . In 1993 the picture was transferred to the collection of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza after it had been on loan there for a year.
Exhibitions
The Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza names a large number of exhibitions at which the painting has been shown since 1944. The picture was shown for the first time in 1944 in New York at the Museum of Modern Art in an exhibition of the works of Feininger and Marsden Hartley . This is followed by exhibitions and a. in San Francisco , Minneapolis , Boston and Cambridge (Massachusetts). In Germany, The Lady in Mauve was shown again for the first time in 1961 in a memorial exhibition at the Kunstverein Hamburg , the Folkwang Museum in Essen and the State Art Gallery in Baden-Baden . There were other opportunities to see the picture in German-speaking countries in 1973 in Munich and Zurich , 1975 in Bremen , 1985 in Düsseldorf , 1997 and 1998 in Düsseldorf and Munich, 2003 to 2004 in Hamburg and 2006 to 2007 in Vienna . In addition to exhibitions in Europe , such as Spain , Italy , France , England , and several times in the USA , the picture was shown in various cities in Japan in 1976 and 1984 .
Individual evidence
- ^ The Lady in Mauve at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza . Retrieved January 13, 2018
- ↑ a b Ulrich Luckhardt: Lyonel Feininger, Prestel Munich, Berlin, London, New York, 2004, ISBN 3-7913-2041-6 , pp. 120f.
- ^ Lyonel Feininger: L'Impatiente at the Harvard Art Museum, New York . Retrieved January 14, 2018
- ↑ a b Paloma Alarcó: Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Pintura Moderna / Modern Painting. Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid 2009, pp. 20, 199, lám. (Spanish / English).