Portrait of the painter Paul Eugène Gorge

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Portrait of the painter Paul Eugène Gorge (Lovis Corinth)
Portrait of the painter Paul Eugène Gorge
Lovis Corinth , 1884
oil on wood
56 × 46 cm
From the Heydt Museum , Wuppertal

The 1884 Portrait of Painter Paul Eugène Gorge is a painting by German painter Lovis Corinth that he painted in Antwerp , Belgium. The picture shows the painter friend Gorge and was created as one of Corinth's early works. It has been owned by the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal since 1913 .

Image description

The painting shows the painter Paul Eugène Gorge in a relaxed pose in a frontal chest portrait, on which he looks directly at the artist and viewer. He wears a dark jacket and , according to Charlotte Berend-Corinth, a dark blue jacket and underneath a light shirt. The right arm, which is placed on a backrest in front of the chest, ends in a hand in which the painter is holding a burning cigarette. The dark portrait is illuminated by a light source to the left of the person being portrayed, making the left cheek and the hand with the cigarette appear bright, while the face is in partial shadow. The background consists of a simple gray-blue wall, according to Sabine Fehlemann , the former director of the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal, the background remained undiscovered in Corinth's early works, which is also shown in the portrait of the negro Othello from the same year, and only form a flat "soundboard" for the portraits, which are brought close to the viewer at the front edge of the picture. According to Horst Uhr , Corinth placed the gray-blue background with the red-blonde appearance of the painter side by side in this picture and executed the picture in brisk brushstrokes, whereby he emphasized the contrast of the bright light from a light source away from the picture and the shadows.

The picture is signed and inscribed “Lovis Corinth. 1884. "

Background and origin

Negro Othello, 1884

Lovis Corinth painted the portrait in Antwerp in 1884 , where he lived for some time and worked in Paul Eugène Gorge's studio. He got to know the painter in Antwerp on the recommendation of Munich painters and became friends with him. Gorge was a member of the Belgian painters' association As Ik Kan , which was founded in 1883 and to which the young Henry van de Velde also belonged and which had devoted itself less to contemporary and more to traditional and conservative landscape painting. Corinth got to know other painters through Gorge who, according to his statements, did not attribute to his character, which he attributes mainly to "that they were a different nation" and "the real East Prussian [...] just does not join forces with strangers" can.

Corinth painted only a few pictures in Antwerp, including a landscape picture with the title In the Reeds . The best-known picture of Corinth from this period is the negro Othello , the portrait of a black port worker from the port of Antwerp. Corinth left Antwerp after only three months to go to Paris to the Académie Julian . With Gorge, however, he was friends all his life. In his autobiographical text My Early Years , published by Charlotte Berendt-Corinth in 1954 , Corinth wrote about Gorge:

"Gorge z. I found B. so amiable and pure of character that I am friends with him to this day. If the horrible world war had not put an end to our traffic today, it would continue today. "

- Lovis Corinth
Portrait of the painter Paul Eugène Gorge (1908)

In 1898 a second portrait of Gorge was created and in 1908 Corinth painted the painter again, this time sitting in an armchair in front of some of his pictures and being significantly older.

Exhibitions and provenance

In 1888 the portrait of Corinth was exhibited in the Königsberg art dealership "Gutzeit" and received attention in the Allgemeine Zeitung in Königsberg . There the picture was highlighted as an "example of a naturalistic colorism", in which the "proper drawing and reproduction of the forms" is less important than "the right coloring in a particularly interesting and unusual side lighting". The reviewer at the time continued: “The technology does not deny the fleeting, sketchy things. But besides the unvarnished truth of nature that looks at us from this portrait study, there is a special painterly charm, primarily in the speedy and confident manner in which the colors are set, in the appropriate treatment of the light tones and the transparency of the half-shadow tones. "

The plant has been owned by the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal since 1913 . It was shown in several exhibitions , especially after the Second World War . In 1950 it was on display in the Landesmuseum Hannover . In 1958, on the occasion of Corinth's centenary, it was shown in a retrospective in Wolfsburg, the Kunsthalle Basel , the Städtische Galerie Munich and in the following year 1959 at the Tate Gallery in London . In 1967 the Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe showed the picture, in 1974 it was on view in the Kunsthalle Bielefeld . In 1975 it was shown again in the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich and the following year in the Kunsthalle Cologne . In 1996 another large Corinth exhibition was organized, which took place in the Haus der Kunst in Munich and in the National Gallery in Berlin and in which the portrait from 1884 as well as the one from 1908 could be seen. In a separate exhibition on Corinth in 1999, the picture was also shown in the Von der Heydt Museum apart from the main exhibition with other Corinth pictures.

supporting documents

  1. ^ A b c Charlotte Berend-Corinth : Lovis Corinth. Catalog raisonné. Revised by Béatrice Hernad. Bruckmann Verlag, Munich 1958, 1992; BC 22, p. 58. ISBN 3-7654-2566-4 .
  2. ^ A b Sabine Fehlemann : Lovis Corinth - An Exhibition. In: Sabine Fehlemann (Ed.): Lovis Corinth. Exhibition in the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal, August 1 to September 19, 1999.
  3. ↑ a b Horst clock: Lovis Corinth. California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1990. ISBN 0-520-06776-2 , pp. 25-28.
  4. ↑ Lovis Corinth: "My early years." Claassen, Hamburg 1954, p. 119. Quotation: I received some recommendations from friends in a bowling alley to a painter Paul Eugène Gorge, who should be a very pleasant person, and then gradually I would become acquainted with other artists.
  5. ↑ a b c Lothar Brauner: Portrait of the painter Paul Eugène Gorge In: Peter-Klaus Schuster , Christoph Vitali, Barbara Butts (ed.): Lovis Corinth . Prestel Munich 1996; P. 101. ISBN 3-7913-1645-1 .
  6. ^ Lovis Corinth: “My early years.” Claassen, Hamburg 1954, pp. 120–121. ( Full text )
  7. ^ Charlotte Berend-Corinth : Lovis Corinth. Catalog raisonné. Revised by Béatrice Hernad. Bruckmann Verlag, Munich 1958, 1992; BC 18, p. 57. ISBN 3-7654-2566-4 .
  8. ^ Charlotte Berend-Corinth : Lovis Corinth. Catalog raisonné. Revised by Béatrice Hernad. Bruckmann Verlag, Munich 1958, 1992; BC 19, pp. 57-58. ISBN 3-7654-2566-4 .
  9. ↑ Lothar Brauner: Neger Othello In: Peter-Klaus Schuster , Christoph Vitali, Barbara Butts (ed.): Lovis Corinth . Prestel Munich 1996; Pp. 100-101. ISBN 3-7913-1645-1 .
  10. ^ Lovis Corinth: "My early years." Claassen, Hamburg 1954, p. 121. ( full text )
  11. ^ Charlotte Berend-Corinth : Lovis Corinth. Catalog raisonné. Revised by Béatrice Hernad. Bruckmann Verlag, Munich 1958, 1992; BC 162, p. 78. ISBN 3-7654-2566-4 .
  12. ^ Charlotte Berend-Corinth : Lovis Corinth. Catalog raisonné. Revised by Béatrice Hernad. Bruckmann Verlag, Munich 1958, 1992; BC 372, p. 110. ISBN 3-7654-2566-4 .
  13. ↑ a b Allgemeine Zeitung, Königsberg 23 November 1888. Quoted from: Lothar Brauner: Portrait of the painter Paul Eugène Gorge In: Peter-Klaus Schuster , Christoph Vitali, Barbara Butts (eds.): Lovis Corinth . Prestel Munich 1996; P. 101. ISBN 3-7913-1645-1 .
  14. ↑ Peter-Klaus Schuster , Christoph Vitali, Barbara Butts (eds.): Lovis Corinth . Prestel Munich 1996. ISBN 3-7913-1645-1 .

literature