Lot 22 D α

This exceptional, charming likeness of a girl comes from the Munich period of Lovis Corinth's œuvre. The same young, dark-haired model can also be seen in two small likenesses created in the same year: once as a full-length figure standing in front of a dishevelled bed in "Das traurige Mädchen" (Berend-Corinth 155), whose mournful gesture of covering her face only serves as a pretext for largely revealing her nude body, and once as "Das lustige Mädchen" (Berend-Corinth 157), which shows her laughing and only scantily covered by a sheet.
Nestled between the pillow and blanket, the girl smiles directly at the viewer with an unaffected cheerfulness in the painting offered here. Only her head, with its curly shock of hair and the lace bonnet tied beneath her chin, and the fingers of her left hand are visible; the rest of her body remains hidden under the voluminous covers. The intimacy of the situation is further underscored through the narrowly cropped view and the horizontal oval of the painted frame. The viewer is simultaneously offered a direct smile from the subject but also a sense of the playful, erotically charged relationship taking place between painter and model.