Oil on canvas 61.4 x 73.7 cm, framed. Signed 'Purrmann' in reddish brown lower right. - Minor craqueleur. Professionally cleaned, in fine fresh colours.
Lenz/Billeter 1924/35
Of the many different variations of this interior, created by Hans Purrmann in Porto d'Ischia in 1924, this painting has a very special charm about it as it shows us a broader section of the room. Moreover, this horizontal format allowed the artist to combine not only a view into the interior but also an outlook. Compositionally, this lefthand view through the tall window frame, so clearly French in character, is counterbalanced by the light-flooded ambience of the right side. The sparsely furnished room glows in the warm colours of the walls and the floor. The wide-open panels of the French window give us a prospect of the shimmering blue water and a harbour bay where the light is even brighter, almost white. This light is caught softly by the opening of the fine, draped curtains and is reflected very nicely in the depth of the room where we can see it reflecting on the white dress of the woman and in the mirror of her dressing table. This gives us a highly sensuous experience of the summer atmosphere and of the well-tempered contrast between the changing colours that pervade both the interior and the exterior.
“During the first half of the 1920s the artist travelled several times to Rome, Sorrento and Ischia. He painted in all these places. [...] He partly saw the diversity of motifs as a matter of painterly versatility, both in terms of colour and also light and shade. [...] Italy genuinely provided Purrmann with a replacement for the scenery of southern France and he therefore continued to return to it until old age.” (Christian Lenz, Die Kunst Hans Purrmanns - Einführung in das malerische Werk, in: Hans Purrmann, Die Gemälde, vol. I, Munich 2004, p. 42).
The traces of a spirited arabesque brushstroke, which appears to comprise the round contours of the sailing boat and the boom, may be the trace of a free sketching, it is abstract, non-representational, as if giving expression to the artistic impulse.
Provenance
Formerly Collection Consul H. Bomke, Dortmund