Still life with jug and book

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Photo-request.svg
 Image wanted 

Still Life with Jug and Book is the title of a painting by the German-Russian painter Alexej Jawlensky . In 1954 it was acquired by the then museum director Clemens Weiler for the Wiesbaden Museum . It bears the inventory number M 691. The painting is signed lower left in the picture “A. Jawlensky ”.

Technology and image carriers

The still life with jug and book is an oil painting in portrait format - 56.5 × 44.5 cm. The authors cite various materials as image carriers in the literature: canvas at Weiler. Karton <in Jawlensy's catalog raisonné. in the inventory catalog of the Museum Wiesbaden Jute and in the Jawlensky catalog from 2014 again cardboard.

Description and painting style

“If you only take a cursory look, you think that Jawlensky is still orienting himself towards 19th century realism and that he only wanted to depict a book and a mug on a whim. That this is not the case at all can only be discovered on closer inspection. Because book and jug are just a pretext to describe something completely different, namely the effect of light. In this picture, Jawlensky demonstrates how light marks the book and makes it recognizable, but how it is absorbed by its soft gray cover. On the other hand, at the cut, the light edges of the book, it can develop to shine in different shades of gray. Only the hard glaze of the light jug activates the light to such an extent that it can reflect and even create a partial brightening through reflection on the brown tablecloth. So we find that at the time the picture was created, Jawlensky was still studying the reaction of various materials to light. The later Expressionists, on the other hand, no longer knew light in the sense of lighting as it is used here. Because their light in painting results from the power and intensity of the color itself. This is not the case in our still life. Since Jawlensky clearly does not care about the realistic apprehension of the object either, he reveals himself as an impressionist in this picture . Because the content and task of the Impressionists was to depict the changing manifestations of reality under the influence of external circumstances such as sun, light, twilight. For the time around the turn of the century, Jawlensky was under the influence of two impressionists. In his memoirs he reports that he owes a great deal to both of them, the Swede Anders Zorn and the Slovenian Anton Ažbe . The two teachers mastered the use of light in painting to perfection, so that Jawlensky's still life can be recognized as a student's work in comparison to their paintings. What all three painters have in common, however, is their peculiar mannered style, which has strayed very far from the French models we are familiar with. [...] Before the original, one little thing should not be overlooked, namely the bright orange nuances that shimmer through the brown of the tablecloth here and there. If you look closely, you can see that they form a large coherent area under the brown layer of paint. The artist did not always cover these in his last work step, intentionally or by accident. But sometimes the orange has been exposed in tiny abrasions over the years. In this way it becomes clear that Jawlensky put this dark picture on a bright color. On the basis of this development one believes to understand that this luminous color had to break out of its banishment one day in order to gain dominion over the surface of his pictures in cooperation with other loud and pure colors. "

Dating

The date of the painting is generally given as "around 1902". It is interesting to question this date, because the years before and after 1902 could also be considered for the creation of the picture. However, Jawlensky's memoirs only offer the possibility of opting for the variant “before 1902”. Information on this is provided in a passage in his memoirs, where the artist reports on his work after leaving the Ažbeschule : “I had a large studio in our apartment. I now started to work independently, to search in order to find myself. I started to paint still lifes and I looked for harmony in colors. [...] For a few years I only painted still lifes. ”That was clearly before his 1901 trip to Russia with Marianne von Werefkin , her“ cook Helene ”, who von Jawlensky was pregnant and who gave birth to his son Andreas in January 1902 in the Latvian town of Anspaki . After a year of absence from Munich, they returned from Russia on November 23, 1902. Jawlensky says of his painting: “After we came back, I started looking again.” A letter from Jawlensky to his painter friend Dmitri Kardowsky makes it clear that he was not yet firmly established in his painting . He wrote to him that his brother Sergej had asked him to “take in the budding painter Wladimir von Bechtejeff and introduce him to art.” Bechtejeff describes this appropriately in his biography for “late 1902”: “With the letter of recommendation from Jawlensky's brother I appeared in Giselastraße in Munich-Schwabing and was immediately warmly welcomed; soon I felt almost like a family member in the Jawlensky / Werefkin house. ”That must have been in the late November days or early December 1902, after Werefkin returned from Russia with Helene, Jawlensky and their son Andreas on November 23rd after a year of absence. Jawlensky turned down Bechtejeff as a pupil because he was obviously not yet able to give lessons. Because he then “accommodated” him in Heinrich Knirr's private painting school .

literature

  • Clemens Weiler: Alexej Jawlensky. Cologne 1959
  • Maria Jawlensky, Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky, Angelica Jawlensky (eds.): Alexej von Jawlensky, Catalog Raisonné of the oil-paintings. Vol. 1, Munich 1991, No. 39, p. 66
  • Bernd Fäthke : Jawlensky and his companions in a new light. Munich 2004
  • Bernd Fäthke: Jawlensky's "Stilleben mit Krug und Buch", the special picture for the 45th year of death of Alexej Jawlensky. MS, Museum Wiesbaden, January 1986
  • Bernd Fäthke: Marianne Werefkin: Clemens Weiler's Legacy. In: Marianne Weref-kin and the Women Artists in her Circle. (Tanja Malycheva and Isabel Wünsche eds.), Leiden / Boston 2016 (English), pp. 8–19, ISBN 978-9-0043-2897-6

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Clemens Weiler: Alexej Jawlensky. Cologne 1959, p. 276, no.695
  2. ↑ Maria Jawlensky, Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky and Angelica Jawlensky (eds.): Alexej von Jawlensky, Catalog Raisonné of the oil-paintings. Vol. 1, Munich 1991, No. 39, p. 66 with b / w illus.
  3. ^ Ingrid Koszinowski: Alexej von Jawlensky, paintings and graphic works from the museum's collection. Wiesbaden 1997, cat. No. 1, p. 15 with color illus.
  4. ↑ Roman Zieglgänsberger (ed.): Exh. Cat .: Horizont Jawlensky 1900-1914, Alexej von Jawlensky in the mirror of his encounters. Museum Wiesbaden 2014, cat.no.15, p. 298, color illus. P. 67
  5. ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Jawlensky's "Stilleben mit Krug und Buch", the special picture for the 45th year of death of Alexej Jawlensky. MS, Museum Wiesbaden, January 1986
  6. ↑ Alexej Jawlensky: Memoirs. In: Clemens Weiler (Ed.): Alexej Jawlensky, Heads-Face-Meditations: Hanau 1970, p. 108
  7. ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Marianne Werefkin: Clemens Weiler's Legacy. In: Marianne Werefkin and the Women Artists in her Circle. (Tanja Malycheva and Isabel Wünsche eds.), Leiden / Boston 2016 (English), pp. 8–19, ISBN 978-9-0043-2897-6
  8. ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Marianne Werefkin. Munich 2001, p. 57, doc. 7
  9. ↑ Alexej Jawlensky: Memoirs. In: Clemens Weiler (Ed.): Alexej Jawlensky, Heads-Faces-Meditations. Hanau 1970, p. 108
  10. ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Marianne Werefkin. Munich 2001, p. 55 f
  11. ↑ Alexej Jawlensky: Memorabilia In: Clemens Weiler (Ed.), Alexej Jawlensky, Heads-Face-Meditations , Hanau 1970, p. 109
  12. ↑ Jelena Hahl-Fontaine: Bechtejeff's long artistic path. In: Exhibition cat. Wladimir von Bechtejeff 1878–1971. Rediscovered! (Murnau Castle Museum), Murnau 2018, p. 29
  13. ^ Annegret Hoberg: Wladimir von Bechtejeff in the circle of the New Artists' Association Munich. In: Exhibition cat. Wladimir von Bechtejeff 1878–1971. Rediscovered! (Murnau Castle Museum), Murnau 2018, p. 44
  14. ^ Annegret Hoberg: Wladimir von Bechtejeff in the circle of the New Artists' Association Munich. In: Exhibition cat. Wladimir von Bechtejeff 1878–1971. Rediscovered! (Murnau Castle Museum), Murnau 2018, p. 44
  15. ^ Maria Jawlensky, Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky and Angelica Jawlensky (eds.): Alexej von Jawlensky, Catalog Raisonné of the oil-paintings. , Vol. 1, Munich 1991, p. 14. Here, the beginning of the friendship with Bechtejeff is also dated to 1904.
  16. ↑ Alexej Jawlensky: Memoirs. In: Clemens Weiler (ed.), Alexej Jawlensky, Heads-Faces-Meditations. , Hanau 1970, p. 108
  17. ↑ Jelena Hahl-Fontaine: Bechtejeff's long artistic path. In: Exhibition cat. Wladimir von Bechtejeff 1878–1971. Rediscovered! (Murnau Castle Museum), Murnau 2018, p. 29