Lyonel Feininger

Lyonel Feininger Boats on the beach I 1923 Ink pen drawing with pastels and watercolor on fibrous handmade paper. 27,9 x 37,6 cm. Framed under glass. Signed in ink below, titled and dated 'Feininger Boote am Strande. I 13 VI 23'. - In good condition. Overall lightly browned. Achim Moeller, Director of the Lyonel Feininger Project LLC, New York - Berlin, has confirmed the authenticity of this work, which is registered in the Lyonel Feininger Project archive under the number 1829-02-10-23. A certificate is enclosed with the work. Provenance Estate of Julia Feininger, New York; Galerie Thomas, Munich, 1992; Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne, 1994; Walter Brune Collection, Düsseldorf Exhibitions New York 1964 (Willard Gallery), Feininger: Oils and Watercolors 1908-1955; Berlin 1964 (Amerika Haus, U. S. Cultural Center Berlin), Lyonel Feininger. Works from the Estate, cat. No. 28 with ill.; Pasadena 1966 (Pasadena Art Museum), Lyonel Feininger 1871 - 1956, cat. No. 85; Munich 1992 (Galerie Thomas), Lyonel Feininger. Paintings, Watercolors, Prints, no. 21, with color illustrations; Cologne 1994 (Galerie Gmurzynska), Lyonel Feininger. Marine, Mellingen, Manhattan, pp. 16f., with color illus.; Wolgast 1999 (Museum der Stadt Wolgast), In the Port of Peppermint: Lyonel Feininger's Ships, cat. No. 16, with color illus. THE MARINE PAINTINGS OF LYONEL FEININGER FROM THE COLLECTION OF ARCHITECT WALTER BRUNE Lyonel Feininger knew them all by name, the schooners, sloops, paddle steamers, galleons, fishing cutters, and three-masters that plied the East River or later the Baltic Sea with full sails or smoking chimneys. Feininger loved to stand on the shore, to devote himself as if spellbound to the spectacle of the passing ships. Hardly any other subject fascinated the German-American painter more than sailing ships and coastal landscapes. As Werner Timm writes in the catalog of Feininger's major 1998 retrospective in Berlin, "Feininger created some of the most artistically significant ship paintings of the 20th century, although he was not a ship painter in the traditional sense - rather a poet concerned with metaphor." (Exh. Cat. Berlin/Munich 1998, p. 308). From the collection of the Düsseldorf architect and urban planner Walter Brune (1926-2021), who is known far beyond Germany, seven top-class watercolors with maritime motifs are now being offered for sale, including two designs for the interior of the "Marine Transportation Building" in New York (Lots 3, 4). The earliest sheet of the collection "City" from 1921 (lot 6) was created before Feininger's stay in Deep at the Baltic Sea. In front of a backdrop of towering houses and church steeples, a red sailboat approaches the viewer directly. Two smaller, neutrally colored ships enrich the riverbank. Unlike later seascapes, the ship is at the center of the composition, but Feininger's main interest was in the various architectures in the background. The most significant period of Feininger's marine painting was the twelve years from 1923 to 1935 in Deep, a seaside resort directly at the mouth of the Rega River near Köslin in Pomerania. In this area Feininger came across a long, unspoiled stretch of coastline that could only be conducive to his design of the sea. A seemingly endless beach, the hilly dune landscape, and further west the rugged cliffs were the ideal conditions for his transformed conception of beach and sea. Deep initially produced pure beach and cloud paintings, still without ships and only occasionally with individual figures, but above all numerous paintings and watercolors with stately sailors and fishing boats. Two fabulous examples of the early years in Deep are the two watercolors "Die kleine Schoner-Barke" (Lot 2) and "Boote am Strande I" (Lot 1). In the calculated composition of "The Little Schooner Barque," he placed the proud ship in the center of the picture. Slowly sailing past the viewer, it is answered to the left and right by other, but clearly smaller ships. Sky and sea occupy spaces of almost equal size, which Feininger marked with parallel, mostly washed lines. The most important artistic means here are the precise pen strokes and the subtle color scheme of blue, black and gray with orange as an accent. In the second sheet, "Boats on the Beach I," the scene was composed with almost mathematical deliberation: The image-dominating four sailboats on the shore are answered by small rowboats, figures and a beach chair. "The network of pen strokes," writes Gunda Luyken in Feininger's 2016 catalog, "resembles oscillating lines of force that, even when drawn with a ruler, never seem mechanical." (Exh. Cat. Düsseldorf 2016, p. 19). Characteristic of all the sheets is that Feininger usually framed his completed works with a border that refers to the lines within the picture. After returning to the United States, he created