Lovis Corinth
Porträt des Direktors Schellinsky
1898
Oil on canvas 110 x 80.5 cm Framed. Signed 'LOVIS COR NTH 1889' [sic] in black upper right.
Between 1898 and 1900, Lovis Corinth created numerous portraits of prominent figures from Munich and Berlin, including this classic likeness of Paul Schellinsky, director of an insurance company in Munich. “In addition [...] a portrait is made of everyone whom he meets and has something to say to him. He embraced the male portrait with greater affection. The female all too readily becomes a model for him, but he brings out the entire spiritual life of the male image. What he provides is more than a likeness, it is like an engagement with the essence and will of the other person […].” (Rohde, Der junge Corinth, op. cit., p. 142).
Through Corinth's admission into the Masonic lodge “In Treue fest”, Paul Schellinsky became the painter's lodge brother, and he is also present in the large-format group portrait of lodge members (Berend-Corinth 164) painted by Corinth in 1898/99.
Catalogue Raisonné
Berend-Corinth 163
Provenance
Schellinsky, Munich; Collection Dr. Zitzmann, Erlangen, its auction at Cassirer-Helbing, Berlin 1925, lot 14, pl. 6; Galerie Caspari, Munich; Sotheby's, London 2 Jul. 1969, lot 151; Sotheby's, London 13 Apr. 1972, lot 35; Hauswedell & Nolte, Hamburg, auction 193, 14 Jun. 1973, lot 252, acquired there by the previous owner, since then in family possession, Lower Saxony
Literature
Alfred Rohde, Der junge Corinth, Berlin 1941, no. 107 with illus. p. 106 (interchanged with no. 76)