Segelboot bei Fehmarn (Sailboat off Fehmarn)

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880 - 1938)

New Walk Museum and Art Gallery

1914

This dramatic woodcut is considered to be among the finest German Expressionist prints of its kind. It shows the artist's wife Gerda with other figures seated in a boat with great black sails, as it moves past the distant shoreline of Fehmarn, an island in the Baltic. Kirchner was the founder of the Die Bruecke (the Bridge) artists' group in Dresden, 1905. His visits to the island from 1908 provided an idyllic alternative to city life where he could be free to develop deeply expressive work of power and energy. The print encapsulates this, with intense contrasts of dark and light and distorted perspective in a taut, segmented composition.

• Medium: woodcut on oriental wove paper
• Dimensions: 41.8 x 39.5cm
• Art Fund Grant: £24000 ( Total: £60,000)
• ArtFunded in: 2006
• Vendor: Robin Garton

Provenance

Gift of the National Gallery, Berlin, to the Director's assistant Alfred Hentzen on his marriage (1934); by descent to Hentzen's son, thence to his widow; Hauswedell & Nolte auction sale, Hamburg (2001); Robin Garton, Devizes.

Add your comments about this artwork Hide this form

Have your say