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Lot Essay
This incisive self-portrait was painted at one of the darkest moments of Lovis Corinth's career. In 1911, Corinth suffered a severe stroke which partially paralyzed the left half of his body. This is the first work he painted upon his return to the studio. Corinth's struggle to regain his mastery of his artistic tools is palpable, as is both the mental and physical pain he struggled with. The confidence and polish that exude from his works of the first decade of the twentieth century is somewhat lost in the wake of his stroke and the viewer senses the artist's struggle with his brush; brush strokes loaded with heavy paint fill the canvas and lend a sense of immediacy to this self-portrait. It was in the years after his stroke that Corinth created many of his masterpieces. He died in 1925 in Zaandvoort, The Netherlands. Having recognized his own failing health, he was en route to a final view of Rembrandt and Frans Hals' masterpieces, artists who he felt reflected and influenced his own style.
In December 1948, Julius Held sent a letter to a number of the well-respected curators in the United States, pleading the case of Lovis Corinth. As a contemporary of Emile Nolde and Max Beckmann, he had been granted a memorial exhibition in almost every major German city after his death; almost 25 years later and after the horrors of World War II, not a single American institution owned a work by him. Held had met Corinth's widow and son, who had moved to the United States in 1939, and were storing his amazing Crucifixions and Walchensee landscapes in a small storage site 'in a dingy warehouse in Harlem'. Held received the support of such luminaries as Erwin Panofsky and Fiske Kimbell, and created a sponsoring committee including Meyer Schapiro and Alfred Einstein. The retrospective was held in 1950 at ten institutions from Boston to San Francisco, and the catalogue to the exhibit included a forward by Held. It was the same year of this, Corinth's first major American retrospective, that Mrs. Corinth gifted this intense and moving self-portrait to Professor Held.
In December 1948, Julius Held sent a letter to a number of the well-respected curators in the United States, pleading the case of Lovis Corinth. As a contemporary of Emile Nolde and Max Beckmann, he had been granted a memorial exhibition in almost every major German city after his death; almost 25 years later and after the horrors of World War II, not a single American institution owned a work by him. Held had met Corinth's widow and son, who had moved to the United States in 1939, and were storing his amazing Crucifixions and Walchensee landscapes in a small storage site 'in a dingy warehouse in Harlem'. Held received the support of such luminaries as Erwin Panofsky and Fiske Kimbell, and created a sponsoring committee including Meyer Schapiro and Alfred Einstein. The retrospective was held in 1950 at ten institutions from Boston to San Francisco, and the catalogue to the exhibit included a forward by Held. It was the same year of this, Corinth's first major American retrospective, that Mrs. Corinth gifted this intense and moving self-portrait to Professor Held.