Lot Essay
By 1909, Pechstein's countryside imagery presented a primitive type that closely relates to Emil Nolde's rural peasant paintings. Pechstein sought a more remote alternative to the whirl of Berlin city life in the fishing village of Nidden, in East Prussia. In the years immediately after World War I, Pechstein made two further visits to Nidden, in 1919 when the present work was painted, and again the following year.
In his memoirs the artist stresses the isolation and inacessibility of Nidden: when he missed the weekly ferry he had to travel with the local fishermen, a journey he undertook in the spirit of an overseas explorer: "I was as full of hope and expectations as an explorer, on route to the New World." Pechstein identified with these primitive, unvoluble and serious companions but was also able to preserve a certain artistic distance from them, meaning he was ideally suited to extract the poetry from their hardworking lives. Although Pechstein preferred the harmonious sunny weather of the tropical islands of Palau which he visited in 1914, he became interested, while in Nidden, in seasonal changes and their consequences on the peasants' life and work as can be seen in the present painting.
Sold with a photocertificate from Max K. Pechstein, dated "Hamburg im Mai 1987".
In his memoirs the artist stresses the isolation and inacessibility of Nidden: when he missed the weekly ferry he had to travel with the local fishermen, a journey he undertook in the spirit of an overseas explorer: "I was as full of hope and expectations as an explorer, on route to the New World." Pechstein identified with these primitive, unvoluble and serious companions but was also able to preserve a certain artistic distance from them, meaning he was ideally suited to extract the poetry from their hardworking lives. Although Pechstein preferred the harmonious sunny weather of the tropical islands of Palau which he visited in 1914, he became interested, while in Nidden, in seasonal changes and their consequences on the peasants' life and work as can be seen in the present painting.
Sold with a photocertificate from Max K. Pechstein, dated "Hamburg im Mai 1987".