Lyonel Feininger

Lyonel Feininger Three-master and sailboats off the coast 1943 Ink pen, watercolor and charcoal on laid paper with watermark "Ingres 1862". 27,8 x 46,8 cm. Framed under glass. Signed in ink lower left and dated on the right 'Feininger 30.8.43.'. - With faint light margin, otherwise in very good condition. 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 158-12-07-05. A certificate is enclosed with the work. Provenance Arthur Tooth & Sons, London; Private collection 1962-1965; Christie's London, auction 9.2.2006, lot 639; Galerie Schwarzer, Düsseldorf, 2006; Collection Walter Brune, Düsseldorf Lyonel Feininger knew them all by name, the schooners, sloops, paddle steamers, galleons, fishing cutters, and three-masters that sailed with full sails or smoking chimneys on the East River or later on the Baltic Sea. 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, Feininger created the watercolor "Dreimaster und Segelboote vor der Küste" (Three Masters and Sailboats off the Coast) in 1943 (lot 5). In contrast to the preceding marine paintings created on the Baltic Sea, the three sailing ships seem to float 'dematerialized' over the water. Without the usual linearity, if one looks away from the river bank and the chain of hills, it is the transparent, delicate colors, the lilac tones and the various gray tones with which Feininger built up the watercolor. The splashes of color reminiscent of raindrops enhance the stillness and transfiguration of the late marine painting. Even though Feininger continued to create marine paintings into the 1950s, he wrote to his son in 1953,