.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Hafen Burgstaaken, Fehmarn (Burgstaaken Harbour, Fehmarn) was painted by Kirchner in the summer of 1913 during his third visit to the remote German island of Fehmarn on the Baltic sea. After Kirchner's move from Dresden to Berlin in 1912, Fehmarn replaced Moritzburg as the artist's summer destination. 'There', Kirchner recalled, 'I learned how to create the ultimate oneness of Man and Nature, and completed what I had begun at Moritzburg.' Responding as always to the relaxed atmosphere and the 'return to Nature' lifestyle that his summer sojourns in Fehmarn afforded, Kirchner's art progressed significantly during this period and it was there that he painted what he often referred to as his 'first pictures of absolute maturity'.
In the summer of 1913, Kirchner returned to spend several months in Fehmarn in the company of his two favourite female models; his girlfriend Erna Schilling and her sister Gerda, along with two young friends, the painters Hans Gewecke and Werner Gothein- who was to become the first owner of this painting. For Kirchner, Fehmarn represented the closest thing possible in Germany to a remote and primitive South Sea island. Living the quasi-primitive lifestyle of painting, bathing and living naked in Nature, much as he had done in Moritzburg, Kirchner wrote lovingly to his friend Gustav Schliefer about the 'South Sea opulence' he had discovered on the remote south side of the island. Kirchner's equating of this chilly Baltic island with the Polynesian paradise of his dreams requires a certain stretch of the imagination, but it also hints at the importance such a lifestyle had for Kirchner and for his art. Kirchner's paintings from Fehmarn account for nearly half of his output between 1912 and 1913. The majority of these are nudes in the landscape that reiterate Kirchner's ideal of man and Nature.
One of the most complex and yet also successful of the paintings Kirchner executed in Fehmarn is Hafen Burgstaaken, Fehmarn- a work that, like his nudes in the landscape, also attempts to express a sense of the integrated harmony between man and Nature that is so central to Kirchner's aesthetic. Using a compacted use of angular form to combine buildings, boats, trees, people and the sea into a dense but harmonious whole, the elaborate but integrated structure of the painting reflects and expresses the complex and integrated relationship between man and nature at the heart of Fehmarn's rural life.
The overall sense of harmony that is evoked in this work is conveyed through Kirchner's masterful use of subdued colour which subtly unites all the disparate elements. This 'evocative, hauntingly subjective, yet intellectualised colour', as Donald Gordon has called it, is one of the distinctive features of the Fehmarn paintings. Indeed, Gordon went so far as to remark that 'because of their colour alone, [Kirchner's] Fehmarn pictures would rank among the revolutionary achievements of his generation of painters' (Gordon, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Cambridge, MA, 1968, p. 80). But it is not the colour that is the most distinctive feature of Kirchner's Fehmarn paintings, but rather the hard sharp angular forms filled with hatched strokes of paint reminiscent of the technique of the woodcut which most characterises his work of this period.
Burgstaaken is a harbour at the south end of the island of Fehmarn. Dominantly visible is the warehouse of Matthäus Hiss' company 'HISSF'. Living in a lighthouse on the south side of the island, Kirchner would often wander the shoreline early in the morning. Here he often collected driftwood from which he would carve rough-hewn figures. These he would sometimes arrange into groups which served as compositional models for his painting. During his stay in Fehmarn his painting stylistically began to emulate the rough angular hatching of his carvings. The other major transition in his style that took place during his summer stays in Fehmarn is in his use of composition. In the Fehmarn paintings the disparity of scale between figure and landscape becomes more pronounced. Until this time Kirchner's compositions always gave roughly equal weight to both the figure and its surroundings but in Fehmarn, his paintings show either a landscape dominated by huge figures, or, as in this work, a complex landscape within which tiny figures operate and interact.
Anticipating to some extent Kirchner's celebrated depictions of the empty streets and deserted street corners of the oppressive mechanised modern metropolis that he would paint on his return to Berlin, Hafen Burgstaaken, Fehmarn is the antithesis of these alienating paintings of urban life. Unlike these paintings where every element seems isolated and divorced from each other, here each supports, interacts and finds an echo in the others so that the overall effect of the painting is one of an intricate but united rural community. Figures sprout like trees, the green of the sea is mirrored by the green of the forest while the shape of the sails of the fishing boats is echoed in the angular roofs of the houses. Suffused in acidic yellows, blues and greens, the special bond that an island community has between land and sea is perfectly encapsulated in this powerful portrait of one of the island's main harbours. Another of the Fehmarn paintings that has a similar resonanceis Gut Staberhof, Fehmarn I, of 1913 which is now in the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg.
In the summer of 1913, Kirchner returned to spend several months in Fehmarn in the company of his two favourite female models; his girlfriend Erna Schilling and her sister Gerda, along with two young friends, the painters Hans Gewecke and Werner Gothein- who was to become the first owner of this painting. For Kirchner, Fehmarn represented the closest thing possible in Germany to a remote and primitive South Sea island. Living the quasi-primitive lifestyle of painting, bathing and living naked in Nature, much as he had done in Moritzburg, Kirchner wrote lovingly to his friend Gustav Schliefer about the 'South Sea opulence' he had discovered on the remote south side of the island. Kirchner's equating of this chilly Baltic island with the Polynesian paradise of his dreams requires a certain stretch of the imagination, but it also hints at the importance such a lifestyle had for Kirchner and for his art. Kirchner's paintings from Fehmarn account for nearly half of his output between 1912 and 1913. The majority of these are nudes in the landscape that reiterate Kirchner's ideal of man and Nature.
One of the most complex and yet also successful of the paintings Kirchner executed in Fehmarn is Hafen Burgstaaken, Fehmarn- a work that, like his nudes in the landscape, also attempts to express a sense of the integrated harmony between man and Nature that is so central to Kirchner's aesthetic. Using a compacted use of angular form to combine buildings, boats, trees, people and the sea into a dense but harmonious whole, the elaborate but integrated structure of the painting reflects and expresses the complex and integrated relationship between man and nature at the heart of Fehmarn's rural life.
The overall sense of harmony that is evoked in this work is conveyed through Kirchner's masterful use of subdued colour which subtly unites all the disparate elements. This 'evocative, hauntingly subjective, yet intellectualised colour', as Donald Gordon has called it, is one of the distinctive features of the Fehmarn paintings. Indeed, Gordon went so far as to remark that 'because of their colour alone, [Kirchner's] Fehmarn pictures would rank among the revolutionary achievements of his generation of painters' (Gordon, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Cambridge, MA, 1968, p. 80). But it is not the colour that is the most distinctive feature of Kirchner's Fehmarn paintings, but rather the hard sharp angular forms filled with hatched strokes of paint reminiscent of the technique of the woodcut which most characterises his work of this period.
Burgstaaken is a harbour at the south end of the island of Fehmarn. Dominantly visible is the warehouse of Matthäus Hiss' company 'HISSF'. Living in a lighthouse on the south side of the island, Kirchner would often wander the shoreline early in the morning. Here he often collected driftwood from which he would carve rough-hewn figures. These he would sometimes arrange into groups which served as compositional models for his painting. During his stay in Fehmarn his painting stylistically began to emulate the rough angular hatching of his carvings. The other major transition in his style that took place during his summer stays in Fehmarn is in his use of composition. In the Fehmarn paintings the disparity of scale between figure and landscape becomes more pronounced. Until this time Kirchner's compositions always gave roughly equal weight to both the figure and its surroundings but in Fehmarn, his paintings show either a landscape dominated by huge figures, or, as in this work, a complex landscape within which tiny figures operate and interact.
Anticipating to some extent Kirchner's celebrated depictions of the empty streets and deserted street corners of the oppressive mechanised modern metropolis that he would paint on his return to Berlin, Hafen Burgstaaken, Fehmarn is the antithesis of these alienating paintings of urban life. Unlike these paintings where every element seems isolated and divorced from each other, here each supports, interacts and finds an echo in the others so that the overall effect of the painting is one of an intricate but united rural community. Figures sprout like trees, the green of the sea is mirrored by the green of the forest while the shape of the sails of the fishing boats is echoed in the angular roofs of the houses. Suffused in acidic yellows, blues and greens, the special bond that an island community has between land and sea is perfectly encapsulated in this powerful portrait of one of the island's main harbours. Another of the Fehmarn paintings that has a similar resonanceis Gut Staberhof, Fehmarn I, of 1913 which is now in the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg.