Walther Bötticher
Buchenwald
1908
Oil on canvas. 100.5 x 60.2 cm. Framed. Signed lower right 'WB 8'. Name of artist, title and year of origin verso on old exhibition label, presumably handwritten by the artist in ink in Sütterlin script, and a largely torn-off haulier's paper label "[...] 016 [Hag]en in Westf." and a label numbered "7549". - Verso with a further divisionistic landscape motif. Minor shrinkage craquelure and occasional minor losses of colour in the pastose application.
The painter Walther Bötticher belonged to the close circle of friends around Karl Ernst Osthaus and the Hagen Folkwang Museum. Committed to a new form of design, the work group held a large exhibition in Cologne in 1914 in which Bötticher was entrusted with the wall styling of the Hagen Room (s. Stamm/Köpnick op.cit., p. 224 ff.). He shared a studio with Christian Rohlfs in Weimar, moved the following year to Berlin, and had contact with Emil Nolde and Die Brücke artist’s group. His works were acquired for the collection in Moritzburg in Halle along with examples by George Minne, Moissey Kogan, Franz Marc and Wilhelm Lehmbruck. Along with many fellow Expressionist artists, Walter Bötticher was killed at a young age in the First World War. His works are rarely found on the art market; a number were last exhibited in 2018 in the Museum Georg Schäfer in Schweinfurt and the Max Pechstein Museum in Zwickau.
Provenance
Private property, North Rhine-Westphalia
Literature
Rainer Stamm/Gloria Köpnick, Karl Ernst and Gertrud Osthaus. Die Gründer des Folkwang-Museums und ihre Welt, Munich 2022