31 - Hans Purrmann

Hans Purrmann Bodenseelandschaft 1931 Oil on canvas. 81.2 x 99.8 cm. Framed. Signed 'H. Purrmann' in black lower right. - Very fine, colour-fresh, original condition. Lenz/Billeter 1931/07 The painting is registered in the Hans Purrmann Archive under the no. 554. Robert Purrmann had dated it to 1924. Provenance Estate of August Ritter, Stuttgart; private collection, Baden-Wuerttemberg Exhibitions Hannover 1960 (Kunstverein), Der Maler Hans Purrmann. Ölgemälde, Aquarelle, Zeichnungen und Graphik von 1898-1960, cat. no. 39, p. 42 This large-format, loosely and lightly painted picture primarily depicts a tree stretching from the top to the bottom of the image. Except for the delicate, somewhat impasto dabs of yellow suggesting flowers along the lower edge, the painting is done in a watercolour-like, transparent technique, that is typical of Purrmann's paintings of this period. This allows Purrmann to produce the effect of the southern light he loved so much. Edmund Hausen accordingly observes: “Particularly in Langenargen on Lake Constance, Purrmann was able to experience a thoroughly southern setting. Here, in a former fisherman’s cottage, he created the magnificent series of landscapes from Lake Constance, which are full of bright light and bold colours featuring, basically, the glittering, sunlit lake. […] For him, it was also not about recording a given section from nature […], it was a matter of finding the image that maintains balance in filling the entire picture plane. […] In Langenargen […] he created […] images that reflect the southern cheer of this landscape” (Der Maler Hans Purrmann, Berlin 1950, pp. 49 and 56). Purrmann’s contemporaries in Berlin also understood the quality of this approach to painting, and he was able to exhibit his work at the Secession there. On 5 February 1931, the Vossische Zeitung wrote: “His [Purrmann’s] room is the high point of the exhibition. It encompasses works from his most recent period: light, delicate, vibrant, shimmering like mother-of-pearl. […] It is an entirely free and light expository technique. Some of it almost produces the effect of a brilliant coloured drawing: that is the extent to which the natural image is reduced down to an extremely translucent system of defined strokes.”