Lyonel Feininger - Enchanted Isles - image-1

Lot 379 D

Lyonel Feininger - Enchanted Isles

Auction 1023 - overview Cologne
26.11.2013, 18:00 - Modern Art
Estimate: 25.000 € - 30.000 €

Lyonel Feininger

Enchanted Isles
1946

Watercolour and pen and ink 31.4/31.6 x 48.5 cm Feininger 28.X.46.

Watercolour and pen and ink on ribbed laid paper with watermark "SESSITIES MILL" 31.4/31.6 x 48.5 cm, framed under glass. Signed 'Feininger' lower left and dated '28.X.46.' lower right. - The paper slightly browned in the mat opening, with narrow light-stain. The margins partly with minimal tears and backed with paper tape on verso, one in the upper corner a little bigger.

Achim Moeller, Managing Principal of the Lyonel Feininger Project LLC, has confirmed the authenticity of the work. The work is registered in the Archive of the Lyonel Feininger Project LLC, New York - Berlin under the no. 1217-08-20-13.
With a photo-certificate from Achim Moeller, The Lyonel Feininger Project LLC, New York, dated 20 August 2013.

Provenance
Galerie Koch, Hanover (1990); private collection, Rhineland

Exhibition
Campione 1965 (R.N. Ketterer), Lyonel Feininger, Gemälde, Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Graphik, exhib. cat. no. 48 with illus. p. 66

Literature
Ruhmer, Feininger Zeichnungen, Aquarelle, Graphik, Munich 1961, p. 58 with illus.

From June to November of 1946, the year of the “Enchanted Isles”, Feininger lived in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. This delicate pen and ink drawing featuring only minimal indications of its subject has been provided with a blue-grey wash that does not cover every part of the sheet, and thus allows the ground of the paper to play a role. Reflections of light were evoked in the sky and on the surface of the water in this way. The objects are carried away into the distance by the vastness of the sea; at the same time the slanting, mountainous horizon opposite the extremely narrow strip of the shore rises up completely unnaturally, producing an abstract dynamic within the composition. On the occasion of Feininger's first major retrospective in the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1944, Alfred H. Barr Jr. wrote:
“Feininger seems to have absorbed in New York many of the essential elements of his art - his love of precise contrapuntal construction in music or cast iron viaducts; an understanding of mechanical forms and dynamics whether of locomotives or model yachts; and a love of the sea, of sailing ships and those more modern craft of the day which used both sail and steam - the ships which still sail in his paintings almost to the exclusion of more recent designs” (cited after the preface by William S. Lieberman, in: Exhib. cat. The Intimate World of Lyonel Feininger, Museum am Ostwall Dortmund 1962, unpag.). Feininger himself said: “I don't paint a picture for the purpose of an aesthetic achievement, and I never think of pictures in the traditional sense. From deep within rises an almost painful urge for the realization of inner experiences, an overwhelming longing, an unearthly nostalgia overcomes me at times, to bring them to light out of a long past” (cited after ibid.).

Certificate

Achim Moeller, Managing Principal of the Lyonel Feininger Project LLC, has confirmed the authenticity of the work. The work is registered in the Archive of the Lyonel Feininger Project LLC, New York - Berlin under the no. 1217-08-20-13.
With a photo-certificate from Achim Moeller, The Lyonel Feininger Project LLC, New York, dated 20 August 2013

Provenance

Galerie Koch, Hannover (1990); private collection, Rhineland

Literature

Ruhmer, Feininger Zeichnungen, Aquarelle, Graphik, Munich 1961, p. 58 with illustr.

Exhibitions

Campione 1965 (R.N. Ketterer), Lyonel Feininger, Gemälde, Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Graphik, exhib. cat. no. 48 with illustr. p. 66