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Lot Essay
This painting is recorded in the Alexej von Jawlensky archive.
Alexej von Jawlensky, who had from a very early stage on in his career chosen the still-life as one of his favourate genres, recalled in his Memoir his first studio experiments: 'I stayed on in Munich with Marianne Werefkin. I had a large studio in our flat and now began working on my own in order to find myself. I started painting still-lifes, searching for harmony in the colours' (quoted in Memoir dictated by Lisa Kümmel, 1937, in: M. Jawlensky, L. Pieroni-Jawlensky, A. Jawlensky, op. cit., p. 29).
The artist's early fascination with still-life was influenced by Cézanne, Gauguin and especially by Matisse. In 1905 Jawlensky, who at the time 'was searching for my own language' (ibid., p. 30), met Matisse while exhibiting six paintings at the Parisian Salon d'Automne of 1905 - the same Salon where Derain, Vlaminck, Manguin and Matisse had caused the infamous fauve sensation. The new artist credo - the construction of volumes to be built through colour, freed from tonal modelling, conveying the artist's immediate working practice - captivated Jawlensky and this aesthetic became part of his standard artistic working practice. Later he remembered that: 'For the first time in my life I had grasped how to paint not what I saw but what I felt' (ibid., p. 30).
Stilleben mit Figur, Früchten und Landschaft, belongs to a series of only four works (Jawlensky 190, 218, 223) executed during the years between 1907 to 1910. Each shows a specific still-life ensemble which features a small, table-top statue of a standing figure. The present work was painted circa 1909/10, during Jawlensky's last months in Murnau, and shows the fusion of Matisses's chromatic influence with the mature awarness of the Murnau years. The initial excitement at the fauve discoveries is here filtered through mastery of spatial recession and perspective.
The present work and the following lot were executed on the recto and verso of the same board, as was Jawlensky's common practice at this stage in his career. The board being thick and the two sides being fully independent works, the two paintings were subsequently divided.
Alexej von Jawlensky, who had from a very early stage on in his career chosen the still-life as one of his favourate genres, recalled in his Memoir his first studio experiments: 'I stayed on in Munich with Marianne Werefkin. I had a large studio in our flat and now began working on my own in order to find myself. I started painting still-lifes, searching for harmony in the colours' (quoted in Memoir dictated by Lisa Kümmel, 1937, in: M. Jawlensky, L. Pieroni-Jawlensky, A. Jawlensky, op. cit., p. 29).
The artist's early fascination with still-life was influenced by Cézanne, Gauguin and especially by Matisse. In 1905 Jawlensky, who at the time 'was searching for my own language' (ibid., p. 30), met Matisse while exhibiting six paintings at the Parisian Salon d'Automne of 1905 - the same Salon where Derain, Vlaminck, Manguin and Matisse had caused the infamous fauve sensation. The new artist credo - the construction of volumes to be built through colour, freed from tonal modelling, conveying the artist's immediate working practice - captivated Jawlensky and this aesthetic became part of his standard artistic working practice. Later he remembered that: 'For the first time in my life I had grasped how to paint not what I saw but what I felt' (ibid., p. 30).
Stilleben mit Figur, Früchten und Landschaft, belongs to a series of only four works (Jawlensky 190, 218, 223) executed during the years between 1907 to 1910. Each shows a specific still-life ensemble which features a small, table-top statue of a standing figure. The present work was painted circa 1909/10, during Jawlensky's last months in Murnau, and shows the fusion of Matisses's chromatic influence with the mature awarness of the Murnau years. The initial excitement at the fauve discoveries is here filtered through mastery of spatial recession and perspective.
The present work and the following lot were executed on the recto and verso of the same board, as was Jawlensky's common practice at this stage in his career. The board being thick and the two sides being fully independent works, the two paintings were subsequently divided.