Séraphine Louis

Séraphine Louis Marguerites 1931 Ripolin on canvas. 81 x 65.3 cm. Top right signed in red 'S Louis'. Not at Körner/Wilkens With a confirmation from Manja Wilkens and Hans Körner, Düsseldorf, dated 28.3.2023. We thank them for their scientific advice. Provenance Dr. Richard Möring, gen. Peter Gan, Hamburg and Paris; Stephanie Möring (in succession); private property Hamburg (from previous owner in succession). Literature Hans Körner/Manja Wilkens, Séraphine Louis 1864-1942, biography / catalog raisonné, Berlin 2020 Little known in Germany, Séraphine Louis is considered one of the most important painters of outsider art in France. "Painter of the sacred heart" Wilhelm Uhde called her, the publican Henri Rousseau, also discovered by him, and other artists of the 'Naive'. After an initial purchase by a Kassel museum in 1928, Séraphine Louis' painting is now represented in a number of museums. In Paris in 1904, the German collector and art dealer Wilhelm Uhde became addicted to the works of the French avant-garde and traded in works by Picasso and Braque, among others. He probably also played an intermediary role in the acquisition of French art by German collectors and museums. In the Parisian countryside, he noticed still lifes by Séraphine Louis, a woman who expressed her religious fervor by painting fruits and flowers. Uhde supported her already before the I. Uhde supported her already before World War I with an employment in his rural 'Pied da Terre' in Senlis and after his war-related absence and return, among other things, with the organization of his own exhibition in 1928. Wanting to become one with nature, Séraphine Louis created flower paintings that stand out for their special density and intensity. Immediately and full of format, blossom to blossom crowd in an 'allover' that seems to vibrate and involuntarily reminds one of sea anemones gently swaying in the water. Our painting comes from the collection of the Hamburg writer Richard Möring, who published as Peter Gan and who had met Wilhelm Uhde in Paris in the late 1920s and remained on friendly terms with him until Uhde's death.