Lot Essay
Gordon writes of the time Kirchner spent in the Taunus area near Frankfurt "the environment in Königstein during the first half of 1916 stimulated a new attitude toward landscape, which gradually assumed importance in Kirchner's later work. For Königstein, located in the Taunus mountains just northwest of Frankfurt, offered hilly vistas with high horizons occasionally interrupted by dominant peaks, which contrasted strongly with the gently rolling landscape common to Saxony and Fehmarn and the flat Brandenburg plain surrounding Berlin. In the small town of Königstein and in the intimate countryside of the Taunus region Kirchner must have been surprised to find in reality those sharply dropping groundplanes and vertically shifting vantage points which he had constructed from imagination in earlier years....Color is also more naturalistic , with landscape colours of green, blue and yellow more prominent."(D.E. Gordon, op. cit., Cambridge, 1968, p.105)
The present painting was originally handled by the celebrated Frankfurt dealer Ludwig Schames , whose one-man exhibitions held in Frankfurt in 1916 and 1918-22 were responsible for establishing Kirchner's reputation in Germany. Kirchner described him as "der feine uneigennützige Freund der Kunst und Künstler. In edelster Weise hat er mir und manchen anderen Schaffen und Leben ermöglicht".
The present painting was originally handled by the celebrated Frankfurt dealer Ludwig Schames , whose one-man exhibitions held in Frankfurt in 1916 and 1918-22 were responsible for establishing Kirchner's reputation in Germany. Kirchner described him as "der feine uneigennützige Freund der Kunst und Künstler. In edelster Weise hat er mir und manchen anderen Schaffen und Leben ermöglicht".