Material Oil on canvas
Dimensions 70 x 60.5 cm
Status Vetted

About the Work

The ‘Still Life with Jugs and Candle’ was acquired by Roman Norbert Ketterer from the artist's estate after he took it over from Kirchner's heirs in 1954. In 1960, it was shown in the touring exhibition of this collection through museums in Germany and Switzerland, with a colour plate in the catalogue. From 1968 to 2006, the painting was in a collection in Cologne.


In his first two years in Davos, 1917 and 1918, Kirchner created no fewer than fourteen still lifes. Stylistically, the ‘Still Life with Jugs and Candle’ really cannot be categorised in the series of these still lifes of a still vigorous Expressionism. On the other hand, with its serene forms and curved contours, with its folded changes in perspective and flat, dissonant colour fields, it fits seamlessly into the paintings of 1927.


Three vessels of strong red, two jugs, one filled, and a bowl with some fruit, surround a blue candlestick with a white candle, on an ochre-coloured tabletop in front of a similarly coloured wood, perhaps already carved, and a wall corner in various dark shades of blue. The colours are often intermixed with white, even in the brushstroke signature at the bottom left, which Kirchner made with the lighter blue with which he outlined the candlestick.


A programmatic work in which the volumes - because that is what the objects of a still life are all about - are projected onto the surface. The later ‘New Style’ is heralded.

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Provenance

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner estate (Davos 1938, Kunstmuseum Basel 1946, Stuttgarter Kunstkabinett Roman Norbert Ketterer 1954); private collection Germany (1968).

Literature

Grohmann, Will: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Stuttgart, 1958, illus. p. 57, (colour plate);

Meisterwerke des deutschen Expressionismus, BHHKZ 1960-1961, cat. no. 32, colour plate 24, (there dated: ‘1917’);

Grohmann, Will: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, New York, 1961, illus. p. 63, (colour plate)

Gordon, Donald E., Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Mit einem kritischen Katalog sämtlicher Gemälde, Munich/Cambridge (Massa.), 1968, p. 348, cat. no. 511, ill. p. 348;

Schick, Karin, ‘Ruhelose Ordnung. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner und das Stilleben’, in: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Die Stilleben, published by Kirchner Museum Davos, editor: Schick, Karin, 2006/2007, pp. 7 - 81, p. 28, ill. p. 26, colour plate.

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