Lot 217 D

Fully aware of the seriousness of a situation giving her the honour of sitting for a portrait, the girl kneels calmly, but looks up curiously. Her physiognomy - the large head whith frizzy thick hair which rests on top of the slender, girlish body - is realised in a lovingly characteristic manner.
Karin Rosenheim was the daughter of the art-loving family of the Berlin banker Ludolf Rosenheim and his wife Edith, who emigrated to the US in the 1930s; here she is portrayed at the age of around three and a half. Edith Rosenheim was friends with Renée Sintenis and purchased animal sculptures from her, as shown by a photograph of horse and donkey sculptures from the estate (see Ursel Berger/Günther Ladwig, Renée Sintenis, Das plastische Werk, Berlin 2013, p. 16) and by the two terriers based on Sintenis's dog Philipp which are available at this auction (Lots 371, 372). However, Rosenheim bought more than animal sculptures from the artist: Sintenis also created a head in terracotta based on Rosenheim's own portrait, who additionally commissioned portraits of her two children, Peter and Karin. The present whereabouts of the terracotta and the small bronze of Peter, which can presumably be seen as the pendant to the small girl offered here, are unclear (cf. Berger/Ladwig 077, 057). The sculptures of the children were cast only once and were not intended for the wider public.
“In the figure of the kneeling girl Sintenis presents herself from a new, charming side. […]The figure of the […] girl was - like almost all of Sintenis' works - cast at Berlin's Noack foundry; it is a fine example of the quality of her bronzes from the 1920s.” (Ursel Berger in her expert report). Previously believed to be lost, it has now finally emerged out of the family and back into the public sphere.