Lot 399 Dα

A 1916 oil painting featuring a related motif, which is entitled “Taunustannen” (Gordon 452) and whose current location is unknown, evidently did not contain any figures. The woodcut presented here and a lithograph created the same year for the “Bildermann” but not published (preserved as an individual sheet, see Gercken 843) are thus more similar in conception, even if they are inverted compositionally. The prints depict two people walking on a path in the woods, which twists around a large fir tree in the middle. The elegant couple appears, shifted slightly apart, at the edge of the composition entirely dominated by the sublime quality of the steeply soaring trees. The semi-abstract forms stand out expressively on the picture plane, particularly in the block's black-and-white contrast on the soft and nevertheless firm, absorbent paper.