Paul Adolf Seehaus - Dünen und Dock - image-1

Lot 500 Dα

Paul Adolf Seehaus - Dünen und Dock

Auction 1070 - overview Cologne
03.06.2016, 18:00 - Modern Art
Estimate: 18.000 € - 22.000 €
Result: 18.600 € (incl. premium)

Paul Adolf Seehaus

Dünen und Dock
Circa 1914

Oil on canvas (38.7/38.9 x 50.6/51.1 cm), mounted on card 38.7/39 x 50.8/51.1 cm Framed. Unsigned. - Format minimally irregular; the painting running out towards the margins of the former canvas overlap. Faint traces of fold in canvas centre (vertical) and in the lower area of the painting (horizontal). Professionally restored and cleaned.

The present depiction of a coast in a horizontally layered composition is to be classified among the so-called Nordic-“Celtic” landscapes of the artist's oeuvre. The pictorial architecture of this smaller format is brought to life by explicit formal contrasts: curvilinear, abstract formal elements encounter a stabilising, more severe linearity in the middle ground. The seemingly oversized superstructure of an elongated steamer appears here, in the water zone - as does a quay (or “dock”) with tower-like red structures built on it. In the right half of the painting, the dynamic dune landscape opens up to provide a view of the wide-streched sea with three sailing boats in the distance; red sails also set an Expressionist accent here. The chromatic contrasts that are utilised evoke light as well as atmospheric, not entirely calm, spirited phenomena.
“Materially the water is depicted not as soft but as hard, compact and filled [...] with brownish red stripes. A slight sense of depth results from the repoussoir motif in the lowermost, front zone of the painting. [...] The brusqueness and inhospitality of this nature, with its sparse vegetation and leaden sky, is heightened through the forlornness of the figures on the shore at the right and the fortress-like character of the tower architecture. The topographical situation presumably had a real model; however, Seehaus has extracted a harsh, foreign allure from the unremarkable view of a coastal dock.” (Dering, op. cit. Bonn 2004, p. 74)
Today, seen from a perspective entirely different from that time, we experience these expressive qualities of an individual pictorial fantasy - particularly the deliberately utilised arrangement of experimentally deployed stylistic components taught by the avant-garde of that time - as more than idiosyncratic and fascinating. We look upon this painting by Paul Adolf Seehaus, which is distinguished by its rarity, with the special joy of a discoverer.

Catalogue Raisonné

Dering G 35; Rave I, 24

Provenance

Artist's estate; Private possession, South Germany

Literature

Peter Dering, Paul Adolf Seehaus. Leben und Werk, Bonn 2004, p. 74, with illus.