Lyonel Feininger - Gelbe Strasse - image-1
Lyonel Feininger - Gelbe Strasse - image-2
Lyonel Feininger - Gelbe Strasse - image-1Lyonel Feininger - Gelbe Strasse - image-2

Lot 7 D

Lyonel Feininger - Gelbe Strasse

Auction 1223 - overview Cologne
06.06.2023, 18:00 - Evening Sale - Modern and Contemporary Art
Estimate: 30.000 € - 40.000 €
Result: 68.040 € (incl. premium)

Lyonel Feininger

Gelbe Strasse
1908

Pen and India ink, watercolour and charcoal on ivory-coloured paper. 26.8 x 21 cm. Framed under glass. Signed and dated 'Feininger 08' in pen and ink upper left, titled 'Gelbe Strasse' lower centre. Inscribed "X L.F." lower left in pencil. With oval estate stamp "Feininger Estate" verso (not in Lugt), inscribed "Gelbe Strasse" and "A 23" in pencil by an unknown hand. - In very good condition with fresh colours. With thin, very pale light-stain.

“Gelbe Straße” is an early pen and India ink drawing created during one of Feininger’s inspiring stays in Paris. Fascinated by the pulsating metropolis, by its partly medieval and partly modern architecture and not least by its extravagantly dressed women, the German-American painter created an abundance of drawings and sketches – often on a daily basis and in rapid succession – during his repeated educational journeys to Paris.
The subject of this unique sheet is a cobblestone street opening on to a small square. The foreground contains a number of figures, some of them boldly cropped by the picture’s edges: two elegant ladies wearing large hats, a man in an elegant frock coat and an older, stocky woman walking along the street supported by a cane. The figures do not concern themselves with one another; however, they do seek eye contact with the viewer, whom they look at secretively or directly. As a contributor to various Berlin newspapers and the “Chicago Sunday Times”, Feininger was a master of the caricaturist’s rapid stroke and was expert at capturing his contemporaries with all their idiosyncrasies and weaknesses. Three dilapidated, picturesque buildings – with the one on the right prominently decorated with a flag – serve him as a backdrop. The “Gelbe Straße” exemplifies the fact that Feininger’s fascination in Paris was not about its main points of interest, such as the cathedral of Notre-Dame or the Eiffel Tower, but the anecdotal and atmospheric quality of the city in the neighbourhoods of Montmartre or the Rive-Gauche. He focused particularly on the diverse and mostly elegant microcosm of the city. Feininger also created comparable scenes from the centre of Weimar during these years. However, the fact that “Gelbe Straße” was created in Paris is demonstrated by the painting “Yellow Street II” (1918, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts), in which the flag can clearly be identified as the Tricolore.

Certificate

Achim Moeller, director of the Lyonel Feininger Project LLC, New York – Berlin, has confirmed the authenticity of this work, which is registered with the Lyonel Feininger Project under the no. 1826-02-10-23. Certificate enclosed.

Provenance

Estate of Lyonel Feininger, New York; Marlborough Fine Art, London; Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne, 1994; Collection Walter Brune, Düsseldorf

Exhibitions

Cologne 1994 (Galerie Gmurzynska), Lyonel Feininger. Marine, Mellingen, Manhattan, pp. 30 f., with colour illus. (gallery label on the reverse of the frame)