Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938)

Bahnhof Königstein im Taunus

Details
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938)
Bahnhof Königstein im Taunus
woodcut, 1916, on firm wove paper with the impressed stamp of Huber Freres Winterthur Silk Blotting, an intermediate state (see note below), a very fine, early impression of this very rare print, with margins, minor rubbing, a soft crease and nick at the lower right sheet corner, tape and slight skinning at the upper reverse sheet corners, a small stain at the lower left and reverse lower right sheet corners, lesser defects, generally in very good condition, traces of another impression verso
L. 13 9/16 x 17 3/16in. (34.5 x 43.7cm.)
S. 16¼ x 22 15/16in. (41.2 x 58.2cm.)
Provenance
Galerie Ferdinand Möller, with inscription Erworben It. Vertrag 1940
Grossherzogliches Badisches Kupferstich Kabinett, Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe (L. 1605); and another circular stamp (not in Lugt)
H. Neuerburg (Lugt 1344a)
Literature
A. and W.-D. Dube, E. L. Kirchner, Das graphische Werk, Munich, 1967, no. 294

Lot Essay

The present impression displays the white base to the tower in the middle ground to the right and the white area above the large shed in the foreground to the right, but it is clearly before the 'strengthening' of many of the existing white lines, some additional outline work and much general strengthening and extending of the broader white areas seen in the impression of the 'second' state illustrated by Dube. In this intermediate state (between Dube's first and second) it appears comparable to the impression in the Staatliche Museum Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, illustrated in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner 1880-1938, Berlin et al, 1979-80, no. 249.

Having been discharged from military service in October 1915, Kirchner spent long periods at Dr. Kohnstamm's sanatorium at Königstein in the Taunus until 15 July of the following year. Here he became fascinated with the railway station and its trains and formed an intense relationship with his environment, a sentiment characteristic of the work he was to do later in Switzerland. 'The lessons Kirchner learned on Fehmarn about the depiction of pure landscape were applied in works of all media during his stay in the Taunus. These works achieved a degree of intensity and stylistic possibilities which prepared the way for the later, great landscapes of Davos' (R. N. Ketterer, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Drawings and Pastels, Belser A.G., Stuttgart & Zurich, 1979, p. 144)

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