Lot 74 D

Around 1920 still life paintings begin to appear in the oeuvre of Cologne painter Anton Räderscheidt’s – the second important subject of his pictures in addition to portraits or, alternatively, pictures of couples. The still life up for auction – “La Lettera”, the letter – is among the earliest images from a series of tulip still lifes from the early 1920s. This painting belongs to the New Objectivity and derives its charm from a regal, reserved use of colour and a balanced composition.
Räderscheidt has placed the picture’s three motifs – the vase, the sheet of paper and the butterfly – before the brown and (in the upper third) black background carefully, so that they almost float. While the simple glass vase with two white tulips occupies the right half of the canvas, a sheet of white paper, on which a yellow-shimmering butterfly has landed, lies to the left. In keeping with the New Objectivity, every motif is depicted with the greatest precision. The colour scheme has been thought out with equal care: thus we find not just three different nuances of green in the still life but also an astounding range of white tones – the tulips’ white with tending towards grey, the hard white of the paper and the delicate, whitish-yellow coloration of the butterfly wings. In terms of the composition, various diagonals can be recognised, and all of them pursue the same aim – emphasising the main motif. Despite all the image’s precision, it does not remain a superficial presentation of two tulips: perhaps it is permissible to interpret the piece of paper in the sense of the picture’s title, “La Lettera”, as a love letter and the butterfly, which has always been a symbol of ephemeral beauty and immortality, as a sign representing Räderscheidt’s recent marriage with the artist Marta Hegemann.
This painting is from the renowned Cologne collection of Kasimir Hagen (1887–1967). From 1926 Hagen headed the Richmod-Galerie, which was located in the street of the same name and primarily promoted young artists from the Rhineland. A particularly close artistic relationship bound Hagen with Räderscheidt, and he owned over 50 works by him – the largest private collection. In gratitude Räderscheidt created a portrait of his gallerist and collector in 1954.