Erich Heckel

Exhibited by Galerie Henze & Ketterer

Material Oil and tempera on canvas

Dimensions 69.5 x 79 cm

Status Vetted

About the Work

In October 1910, Erich Heckel and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner travelled to Hamburg and visited Gustav Schiefler, the spiritus rector of the early ‘Brücke’ circle of collectors there, and in the following years often visited his country house in Mellingstedt, where Heckel depicted various Alster landscapes and the Mellingburg lock in all techniques.

As is so often the case in Erich Heckel's landscapes, the lower half is taken up by a river, in this case the narrow Alster, which widens into a small pond. The opposite shoreline divides the composition horizontally in the centre. On the right, the Alster disappears a little higher under the trees that dominate the upper half of the picture, leaving only a little of the blue sky above free.

Although the blue reflected on the surface of the water also dominates the lower half, the composition is overwhelmed by the green of the trees, a spring green. The park landscape becomes a picture of vegetation.

The pure landscape was already of great importance in Erich Heckel's early work. It became dominant in the following decades until the 1950s. In it, he was able to develop his pure painting without the distraction of specific and defining objects or people. Here in the fiercely expressive brushstrokes of 1913.

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Provenance

The Essen ophthalmologist and collector Prof Dr Richard Hessberg (1879 Essen 1960) acquired the painting as early as 1914. After his death in 1960 at the latest, the painting passed to his son Dr Klaus Hessberg, who gave it to the Museum Folkwang on permanent loan.

Literature

Hüneke, Andreas: Erich Heckel, catalogue raisonné of paintings, murals and sculptures volume I (1904-1918), published by Erich Heckel Stiftung Hemmenhofen, Munich, 2017, cat. no. 1913-29, ill. p. 231, colour plate.