Lot 215 D

According to Rainer Noeres, the Otto-Modersohn-Museum, Fischerhude, owns a preparatory drawing by the artist of the birch tree motif as well as two sketches of the view of the village on the reverse.

When Otto Modersohn painted this evening view of a typical landscape around Worpswede, he chose rather an unusual perspective. We can see the trunks of two thick birch trees rising up immediately before our eyes and structuring the painting into three vertical sections. Behind the trees is a canal, flowing idly towards the horizon and cutting through the flat marshland. Exciting contrasts are provided by a juxtaposition of colours: the shimmering white bark of the trees set against the warm brown tones of the landscape and the cool blue of the sky and slow waters. At the same time, the accentuated foreground is in strong contrast with the foreshortening depth resulting from the diagonal of the canal.
The Fischerhude village scene on the reverse, created about five years earlier, differs significantly in its painterly style and thematic tenor. Yet here, too, the pictorial space has a clear structure. It is divided vertically by a tree trunk soaring upwards in the middle of the composition, while the centre is surrounded by a wide range of triangular and rectangular shapes, comprising the gables, roofs and a haystack.