Beach on Norderney
Strand auf Norderney is a painting by the painter Albert Weisgerber from 1910 in the Impressionist style . It shows summer guests strolling on the beach on the North Sea island of Norderney . The 79 × 70 cm picture, painted in oil on canvas, is one of the artist's main works. It is in the collection of the Saarland Museum in Saarbrücken .
Image description
The painting shows the beach on the North Sea island of Norderney, which is populated with holiday guests. On the left you can see the blue sea jutting diagonally into the picture, on the right a dune with greenish vegetation rises. Together, the sea and the dune form the horizon line, above which the sky rises in a diffuse color mix of white, blue and red tones. From a high point of view, Weisgerber has sketched those looking for relaxation strolling to the horizon on the sandy yellow beach. The people are usually arranged in pairs. Sometimes they run straight towards the viewer, other strollers move in the opposite direction. The pair in the foreground, cut off from the lower edge of the picture, brings the viewer directly closer to the action.
The clothes of the migrating couples are very similar. The women wear light, floor-length dresses with a matching large hat, the men wear dark jackets that they have combined with light or dark trousers. In addition, a dark hat or a maritime cap is often found as headgear. A man wears a summer straw hat. Only a few children can be recognized. On the far left of the shoreline, next to a standing man, there is a stooped child who is probably absorbed in the game there. On the right, another child is accompanying a couple walking in front of the dunes. Individual red spots of color are strikingly placed in the picture, ranging from the belt of the child on the left, through the hat band and handbag of the woman in the foreground to the red headgear of the child on the right. In addition to the light-dark rhythm of the women's and men's clothing, the picture shows pastel tones flowing into one another, especially in the empty beach area in the foreground, some of which suggest sea moisture as blue-green shadows.
The picture is done in an impressionistic style with clearly visible brushstrokes. In the dress of the woman in the foreground, this lively application of paint almost creates the impression that the wind is moving the fabric. The impression of the wind is also reinforced by the lowered head. For the authors Imiela / Weber, this summery social scene shows the “close proximity to Impressionism” and a “mastery of smooth, effective painting”. Elke Ostländer, on the other hand, notices, in addition to “cheerful strolling” in the picture, “a strange, uncommunicative strangeness”. For the art historian Saskia Ishikawa-Franke, the painting Strand auf Norderney is “one of the most important paintings” by Albert Weisgerber.
The painting is not signed and not dated. There is a blurred landscape view on the back. A motivic connection with the front view is not known.
Background to the creation of the painting
Summer guests on the beach found their way into painting a few decades before Weisgerber's picture. Above all, the French impressionist painters discovered leisure time by the sea as a subject worthy of picture. This motif can be found repeatedly in Claude Monet's work , for example in the painting On the Beach at Trouville from 1870 . While Monet captured the hustle and bustle on the Normandy coast, his Scandinavian colleague Peder Severin Krøyer shows in the picture Summer Evening on Skagen's South Beach from 1893 two women strolling along the beach on a lonely beach in northern Denmark. A similar picture theme, while the women performed up close clearly as a portrait, painted in 1909, the Spaniard Joaquín Sorolla in his walk on the beach under the southern Mediterranean sun. However, the greatest influence on Weisgerber's work probably had Max Liebermann , who created numerous beach scenes during his stays on the Dutch North Sea coast, including Strand in Nordwijk during a storm in 1909.
Claude Monet:
On the Beach at Trouville , 1874, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
Peder Severin Krøyer:
Summer evening on the Skagen south beach , 1893, Skagens Museum, Skagen
Joaquín Sorolla:
Walk on the Beach , 1909, Museo Sorolla, Madrid
Max Liebermann:
Strand in Nordwijk near Sturm , 1908, private property
There is evidence that Weisgeber stayed on the North Sea island of Norderney in the summer of 1907. By marrying the daughter of a Munich banker, he was able to live a generous lifestyle, which also included such a vacation trip. A first painting with a motif from the North Sea island is the painting Beach with Flagpole , which he completed in 1908. The picture shows a group of people looking down at the beach from an elevated position. A trimmed flagpole and the lines of a railing give the picture, as strict vertical and horizontal lines, a framework that is missing in the successor picture Beach on Norderney . The latter, the author Saskia Ishikawa-Franke suspects, may have been created from memory in the Munich studio and not on site at the North Sea.
As early as 1907 Weisgerber painted the painting Procession in St. Ingbert , which shows a religious procession in his native town. From a window the view of the passing people goes down. In this picture the viewer is put into the role of the observer, while three years later he is put right in the middle of the action on the beach on Norderney . He chose the people running directly towards the viewer again in 1911 in the painting Im Münchner Hofgarten , in which elegant society is shown strolling through a Munich green area.
Albert Weisgerber:
Beach with Flagpole , 1908, private property
Albert Weisgerber:
Procession in St. Ingbert , 1907, Saarland Museum, Saarbrücken
Albert Weisgerber:
In the Munich Hofgarten , 1911, Lenbachhaus Munich
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Provenance
The painting was in his possession until the artist's death. In 1917 it came from the estate to the Arnold Gallery in Dresden. It was later bought by the entrepreneur Franz Josef Kohl-Weigand, who lives in Weisgerber's hometown of St. Ingbert, for his collection. When Kohl-Weigand got into financial difficulties, the Saarland Cultural Heritage Foundation took over the collection in 1979. Since then, the picture has been shown in the permanent exhibition of the Saarland Museum in Saarbrücken.
literature
- Jutta Hülsewig-Johnen, Thomas Kellein : The German Impressionism. , Exhibition catalog Bielefeld. DuMont, Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-8321-9274-7 .
- Hans-Jürgen Imiela , Wilhelm Weber : The Kohl Weigand Collection . Moos, Heidelberg 1961.
- Saskia Ishikawa-Franke: Albert Weisgerber, life and work, paintings . Institute for Regional Studies of the Saarland, Saarbrücken 1978.
- Elke Ostländer: Art spaces, the countries as guests in the National Gallery Berlin . Exhibition catalog, Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-88609-184-4 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Hans-Jürgen Imiela, Wilhelm Weber: The collection Kohl-Weigand. P. 90.
- ^ Elke Ostländer: Art spaces, the countries as guests in the National Gallery Berlin. P. 107.
- ^ Saskia Ishikawa-Franke: Albert Weisgerber, life and work, paintings. P. 81.
- ^ Saskia Ishikawa-Franke: Albert Weisgerber, life and work, paintings. P. 234.
- ^ Hans-Jürgen Imiela, Wilhelm Weber: The collection Kohl-Weigand. P. 90.
- ^ Saskia Ishikawa-Franke: Albert Weisgerber, life and work, paintings. P. 234.