Sun over Pine Forest
Schmidt-Rottluff, Karl
Rottluff, 1884 - Berlín, 1976
Sun over Pine Forest, 1913
Signed & dated lower right: ''S. Rottluff 1913''.
Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection
Location: Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, Madrid
Oil on canvas
77 x 90,5 cm
CTB.1961.14
Artwork history
-
Dr. Wilhelm Niemeyer, Hamburg
-
Roman Norbert Ketterer Collection, Campione d’Italia
-
Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Lugano, 1961
-
Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection
-
-Gosebruch, E.: “Schmidt-Rottluff'”. En Genius. Zeitschrift für alte und werdende Kunst. 1920, vol. 2, n. 1, p. 10, lám. p. 7.
-
-Sydow, Eckart von: Die deutsche expressionistische Kultur und Malerei. Berlín, Furche, 1920, p. 114.
-
-Grohmann, Will: Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Stuttgart, W. Kohlhammer, 1956 , pp. 67, 286.
-
-Wietek, G.: Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Bilder aus Nidden 1913. Stuttgart, 1963, p. 11.
-
-Brix, K.: Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Vienna – Munich, 1972, p. 30.
-
-Kiel, Hanna: The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection of Modern Paintings. Castagnola, Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, 1974, p. 136, lám. p. 135.
-
-America & Europe, a century of modern masters from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. [Exhib. Cat. Perth, Art Gallery of Western Australia – Christchurch, Robert McDougall Art Gallery,1979-80]. Sydney, Australian Gallery Directors Council, 1979 , n. 34, pp. 55,144, lám. [Sheet by Zafran]
-
-Herbert, B.: German Expressionism. Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter. London, Olympic Marketing Corp, 1983 , lám. XVIII.
-
-Wietek, G.: Karl Schmidt-Rottluff in Hamburg und Schleswig-Holstein. Neumünster, 1984, p. 101, lám. p. 184.
-
-Vergo, Peter: Expressionism. Masterpieces from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. [Exhib. Cat..]. Lugano, Fondazione Thyssen-Bornemisza – Milan, Electa, 1989, n. 12, p. 42, lám. [ Sheet by Vergo]
-
-Expressionism and Modern German Painting from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Washington (DC), National Gallery of Art; Fort Worth (TX), Kimbell Art Museum; San Francisco (CA), San Francisco Museum of Art [Exhib. Cat.], 1989, n. 34, p. 90, lám. p. 91.
-
-Vergo, Peter: Twentieth-century German Painting: the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. London, Sotheby’s Publications, 1992, n. 104, pp. 368-370, lám. p. 369.
-
-Del impresionismo a la vanguardia en la Colección Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, Barcelona, Centre Cultural Caixa Catalunya [Exhib. Cat. ], 1999, pp. 168, 170, lám. p. 169, det. p. 171.
-
-Moeller, Magdalena M.: “Karl Schmidt-Rottluff: vida y obra”. Schmidt-Rottluff. Colección Brücke-Museum Berlin. [Exhib. Cat..]. Madrid, Fundación Juan March, 2000, pp. 7-47, cit. p. 26, fig.
-
-Moeller, M. … [et al.]: Die großen Expressionisten. Cologne, 2000, p. 281, lám.
-
-Colección Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza. Arnaldo, Javier (ed.). 2 vols. Madrid, Fundación Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza, 2004, vol. 2, p. 366, lám. p. 367 [Sheet by Peter Vergo]
-
– German Expressionism from the Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza [Exhib. Cat. Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Solana, G.; Alarcó, P.], Madrid, 2020, Cat. 59, p. 182-183.
-
-Colección Carmen Thyssen. Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza. Ed. Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, 2024. P. 326-327 [Sheet by Peter Vergo]
Expert report
Sun over Pine Forest was originally owned by the Hamburg collector and art historian Dr Wilhelm Niemeyer, who was one of the most important of Schmidt-Rottluff’s friends and patrons during the years leading up to the First World War. Niemeyer had been the driving force behind the exhibitions of the West GermanSonderbund, held from 1909 onwards, at which works by modern French artists-including Braque, Picasso and other Cubist painters-were shown. Schmidt-Rottluff must have encountered French Cubist works in the original by 1912, at the latest, at the Cologne Sonderbund exhibition-that is, a whole year before Sun over Pine Forestwas painted. But he probably knew a good deal about the latest development of French art long before that date, thanks to his acquaintance with Niemeyer. The Cubists’ influence is clearly seen in this painting of sand dunes and pine trees, which, with its flat colours, geometric shapes and palette composed largely of ochres and reddish-browns, may be seen as a direct response to what one writer has called the “challenge of Cubism.”
The picture also bears an obvious resemblance to another work in the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection, Max Pechstein’s Summer in Nidden of 1919-1920, which exhibits a very similar composition and is likewise dominated by a blazing, non-naturalistically depicted sun and the gaunt, hieratic shapes of the trees. In fact, both pictures were painted in much the same location, close to the fishing village of Nidden on the East Baltic coast. Nidden itself stands on what is known as the “Kuhrische Nehrung”, a long, narrow strip of land dividing the sea from a shallow lagoon, the Haff. This region is now part of Lithuania, but up to the end of the Second World War it still belonged to East Prussia and had, long before the turn of the century, become a popular place of pilgrimage for German artists. With its simple fisher-folk, its rolling sand-dunes and forests of pine and fir inhabited by elk and deer, it was, in many ways, the epitome of those rural artists’ colonies such as Pont-Aven or Worpswede that played such an important role in the development of early modern art. This remote environment not only provided painters with an unspoiled landscape and a wealth of picturesque subjects to depict. They also saw in the continual struggle for survival waged by the primitive fishing community an image of the unity of man and nature, untouched by “progress”, the dubious benefits of civilisation.
In fact, it was Pechstein who had first introduced Schmidt-Rottluff to Nidden, having visited the area for the first time in the summer of 1909. He returned there two years later, and on both occasions lodged with the fisherman Martin Sakuth, who also befriended Schmidt-Rottluff during the latter’s 1913 visit. Schmidt-Rottluff’s stay, which lasted from May to August 1913, produced a rich crop of at least thirty paintings: depictions of the coastline and fishing boats, studies of figures in a landscape setting and views of the pine forests surrounding the scattered fishermen’s cottages of Nidden itself. It is to this last category that the present picture belongs.
Peter Vergo