Lot 211 Dα

In mid-December of 1914, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner wrote to Eugen Diederichs, the founder of the publishing house of the same name, “Thank you very much for sending the book. I'm especially interested in it right now, because I've painted a large picture of female bathers in a bath”, and Kirchner provided his letter with a rapid, but very detailed little drawing (cited in Hans Delfs (ed.) Der gesamte Briefwechsel, vol. I, Zurich 2010, p. 97).
This drawing specifically depicts the central section of the painting Kirchner conceived in the form of a triptych: three nude women - varied according to the classical principle of the Graces - help one another get out of the bath, dry off or wash (see comparative ill.). A female nude seen from the front and from behind has been placed to the left and right of the group in the middle and is linked to this central motif through the continuation of the background.

Our important, large-format drawing formerly owned by Dr Frédéric Bauer and Rüdiger Graf von der Goltz was apparently created during the developmental stage of the painted triptych.
Thus the early drawing unites the entire group of five bathers, gathered around the bath in correspondingly interrelated movement and mirrored views. The outer female figures flank the central scene; of the three central figures, the one on the right is about to climb into the tub, while the middle figure washes the crouching figure to the left. The diagonal of the bathtub faces in the opposite direction, and the room also opens towards the other (the right) side - in contrast to the composition of the later painting.
The volumes of the bodies and the pictorial space are captured through a few hatched lines; the more delicate pencil drawing is accentuated with the more emphatic pen-and-ink drawing. Kirchner has dated and signed the drawing in full, something he did only with those works on paper which were important to him. Beyond its intrinsic artistic value, this work is also to be seen as an important document of his creative process as a painter.
The pen and ink drawing was in the large collections of Kirchner's doctor in Davos, Dr Frédéric Bauer, and later in that of Rüdiger Graf von der Goltz, who also owned several paintings from every period in Kirchner's oeuvre, with a focus on the “female nude” (see Donald E. Gordon, Ernst Ludwig Kircher: Mit einem kritischen Katalog sämtlicher Gemälde, Munich 1968, nos. 207, 223, 287, 322, 342, 419, 651).


Comparative illustration: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Badende Frauen, 1915/1925, oil on canvas - triptych, 196 x 66 cm / 196 x 171 cm / 196 x 66 cm, Estate Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Galerie Henze Ketterer, Wichtrach/Bern
From: Exhib. cat. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Retrospektive, Städel Museum Frankfurt 2010, p. 132 f.