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拍品专文
Achim Moeller has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Painted on March 30th 1909, this complete ink and watercolour depiction of 'the Green Bridge' of Feininger's idealised and imaginary 'city at the end of the world' was made in preparation for his celebrated oil version of the same subject which he completed on 6th May. In 1909, Feininger was heavily immersed in what he saw as an important and necessary period of transition from being an illustrator to becoming a painter. Working carefully and methodically, it was Feininger's practice at this time to painstakingly work out almost every detail of the composition and structure of his paintings in what was for him, the more familiar and more graphic media of ink and watercolour before attempting to recreate these visions in oil.
Die grüne Brücke is, as the hand-drawn frame and title underneath the work suggest, a fully completed watercolour made in preparation for the oil painting that Feininger worked on throughout April 1909 (fig. 1). Almost identical to this watercolour version, the oil painting is one of the artist's finest early works and was proudly exhibited by Feininger at the 1911 Salon des Indépendents in Paris where it was seen and reputedly much admired by Henri Matisse.
Feininger's central concern in this work has been to impose a sense of scale and proportion into the scene depicted, establishing a unique spatial dialogue between the lofty vault of the bridge and the figures upon it and the tall elongated figures passing beneath. 'The slightest difference in relative proportions creates enormous differences with regard to the monumentality and intensity of the composition', Feininger wrote in 1906. 'Monumentality is not attained by making things larger - how childish! - but by contrasting large and small in the same composition. On the size of a postage stamp one can represent something gigantic, while yards of canvas may be used in a smallish way and squandered.' (Lyonel Feininger cited in Lyonel Feininger -Marsden, Hartley exh. cat, New York , 1944, p. 18)
Alongside his ever-present concern at this time for the establishing of a harmonious and successful colour composition, proportion has been Feininger's chief preoccupation in this work. Echoing Feininger's studies of the towering Roman aqueduct he had seen in Arcueil, the 'green bridge' is undoubtedly the central 'character' of this work. An impressive example of Feininger's mastery and command of proportion and scale, this impressive bridge, as Hans Hess once noted, also seems to reflect Feininger's 'own feeling for height' and perhaps 'the projection of his own slim angular figure,(which) found an echo and identification in tall structures.' (Hans Hess, Lyonel Feininger, London, 1961, pp.47-8)
More than this however, the 'green bridge' does not just divide the composition and lend the work a dramatic intensity it also generates what Hess called a 'mysterious relationship' between figures above and those in the lantern-lit alley below, seemingly dividing the work into two separate parts and perhaps hinting at an unjust social divide in Feininger's idealised and imaginary city.
(fig. 1) Lyonel Feininger, The Green Bridge, 1909. Private collection.
Painted on March 30th 1909, this complete ink and watercolour depiction of 'the Green Bridge' of Feininger's idealised and imaginary 'city at the end of the world' was made in preparation for his celebrated oil version of the same subject which he completed on 6th May. In 1909, Feininger was heavily immersed in what he saw as an important and necessary period of transition from being an illustrator to becoming a painter. Working carefully and methodically, it was Feininger's practice at this time to painstakingly work out almost every detail of the composition and structure of his paintings in what was for him, the more familiar and more graphic media of ink and watercolour before attempting to recreate these visions in oil.
Die grüne Brücke is, as the hand-drawn frame and title underneath the work suggest, a fully completed watercolour made in preparation for the oil painting that Feininger worked on throughout April 1909 (fig. 1). Almost identical to this watercolour version, the oil painting is one of the artist's finest early works and was proudly exhibited by Feininger at the 1911 Salon des Indépendents in Paris where it was seen and reputedly much admired by Henri Matisse.
Feininger's central concern in this work has been to impose a sense of scale and proportion into the scene depicted, establishing a unique spatial dialogue between the lofty vault of the bridge and the figures upon it and the tall elongated figures passing beneath. 'The slightest difference in relative proportions creates enormous differences with regard to the monumentality and intensity of the composition', Feininger wrote in 1906. 'Monumentality is not attained by making things larger - how childish! - but by contrasting large and small in the same composition. On the size of a postage stamp one can represent something gigantic, while yards of canvas may be used in a smallish way and squandered.' (Lyonel Feininger cited in Lyonel Feininger -Marsden, Hartley exh. cat, New York , 1944, p. 18)
Alongside his ever-present concern at this time for the establishing of a harmonious and successful colour composition, proportion has been Feininger's chief preoccupation in this work. Echoing Feininger's studies of the towering Roman aqueduct he had seen in Arcueil, the 'green bridge' is undoubtedly the central 'character' of this work. An impressive example of Feininger's mastery and command of proportion and scale, this impressive bridge, as Hans Hess once noted, also seems to reflect Feininger's 'own feeling for height' and perhaps 'the projection of his own slim angular figure,(which) found an echo and identification in tall structures.' (Hans Hess, Lyonel Feininger, London, 1961, pp.47-8)
More than this however, the 'green bridge' does not just divide the composition and lend the work a dramatic intensity it also generates what Hess called a 'mysterious relationship' between figures above and those in the lantern-lit alley below, seemingly dividing the work into two separate parts and perhaps hinting at an unjust social divide in Feininger's idealised and imaginary city.
(fig. 1) Lyonel Feininger, The Green Bridge, 1909. Private collection.