Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

(German, 1880-1938)

Skizzenalbum: an album compiled by the artist of 40 watercolours and drawings from 1900 - 1932 27x 23.5cm (10 5/8 x 9 1/4in) Album size

Footnotes

This work is listed in the Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Archives, Wichtrach/Bern.

Provenance
Dr. Frédéric Bauer Collection, Davos (a gift from the artist, 1932); his sale, Stuttgarter Kunstkabinett, 19 May 1954, lot 1227.
Private collection, Düsseldorf.
Thence by descent to the present owner.

Literature
Exh. cat., Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Gemälde und Graphik der Sammlung Dr. F. Bauer- Davos, Nuremburg, 1952, no. 258 (last drawing of the album illustrated p. 69).

You may download the catalogue for this lot by clicking here

This rare, bound collection of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's drawings is one of three compilations of sketches that were made by the artist and gifted to his devoted doctors in Switzerland. Given that up to 20,000 sketches by Kirchner's hand are estimated to exist, his selection of 40 specific works for the present volume is significant. Indeed, Kirchner's choice of drawings, mostly dating from his early Expressionist years in Dresden and Berlin, and his arrangement of the sketches into a numbered sequence, gives us a unique insight into the artist's mind. The experience of slowly turning the pages of this magical book, which has been preserved in two private collections since its inception, not only brings us into unusually intimate contact with the artist but also takes us to the very heart of his studio practice.

The fortunate recipient of this exceptional gift, Dr. Frédéric Bauer, was not only Kirchner's doctor, but also a friend, occasional model, and one of his most important collectors – an exhibition in Nuremburg in 1952 of Bauer's collection presented 390 works by Kirchner, including 29 oil paintings. Bauer took over the care of Kirchner's fragile health in 1922 after the death of Dr. Lucius Spengler, who had also received a book of 20 sketches as a Christmas gift from the artist in 1921. Apparently Kirchner subsequently gifted two collections of sketches to Dr. Bauer: the present volume comprising 40 watercolours and sketches, which the artist inscribed as containing 'drawings from my sketchbooks dating from 1900 to 1932', and a second volume of 70 works inscribed 'drawings from my sketchbooks dating from 1902 to 1933.' Both volumes were auctioned alongside other items from Bauer's collection in 1954, when the doctor's interest shifted to acquiring Indian art. While the present volume entered a private collection, the second book of 70 sketches is now owned by the Folkwang Museum in Essen.

Sifting through the drawings in his Davos studio while preparing these gifts undoubtedly afforded Kirchner an opportunity to take stock of his life's work. Sketching came almost as naturally to Kirchner as breathing: he always carried a sketchbook in his pockets, which were especially adapted for this purpose; indeed, one of these small books bound in wax cloth was found in his jacket on the day of his suicide. A decade earlier the artist described his constant practice of sketching in his diary: 'Wherever he [Kirchner] is and goes, he works. Pedestrians walk past the house, a carriage passes on the street, a visitor arrives, Kirchner takes everything as an occasion to create. Waiting for the streetcar, he draws the passers-by, he draws the audience in the concert, the figures on the cinema screen. No day goes by, even when he is travelling, when he does not make his notes' (E. L. Kirchner quoted in 1927 in L. Grisebach, E. L. Kirchners Davoser Tagebuch, Cologne, 1982, p. 156).

The pages of Kirchner's sketchbooks indeed acted as a kind of diary, often containing, alongside his drawings, the observations, addresses and shopping lists he made from day to day – examples are found on the reverse side of drawings in the present volume. Frequently Kirchner would take up a half-empty sketchbook and add drawings at a later date; in other instances he would rip out pages that would serve as a starting point for more fully worked studio drawings, graphics and paintings. The Expressionist expert Karlheinz Gabler observed that each time Kirchner tore out a page in this fashion, a second sheet would fall loose. Gabler believed that Kirchner used some of these 'secondary' sheets – which numbered in the thousands by 1932 – to create the bound volumes he gifted to his doctors (K. Gabler, E. L. Kirchner Zeichnungen, Aschaffenburg, 1980, p. 363).

Although Kirchner dated the 40 drawings in his gift to Dr. Bauer '1900 to 1932', the earliest drawings in the volume actually date from 1906-7. Kirchner notoriously backdated his work in order to claim artistic precedence. Sketch 2 is a case in point, which the artist has signed and dated '1902', although its style and subject relate to his larger studio drawings of the August the Strong monument in Dresden's Neustadter Market dating from 1910-11 . Typically, this studio drawing reorganizes the on-the-spot sketch into a more complete and balanced composition, while nevertheless re-conjuring the spontaneous effects that Kirchner valued so highly in his first sketches. Often made on the wing in streets, parks and theatres, the artist's fleeting sketches maintain similar stylistic traits throughout his career, which renders their dating difficult. However, the quality of line in sketches 1, 4, 5, 6, and 14 clearly relate to Kirchner's earliest Brücke style, while the application of watercolour and blue and red crayon in sketches 5, 16 and 17 point to the period 1907 to 1908. The first 20 sketches in Dr. Bauer's book can mostly be dated to Kirchner's Dresden years, while the second half of the book shows the transition to his Berlin style of 1911 to 1915. Only the last five sketches in the collection date in all likelihood from his Swiss period, with the final line drawing of a dancer on yellow paper representing Kirchner's current style in 1932.

Kirchner's emphasis on his Brücke years rather than his recent work is noteworthy, particularly given the bitter circumstances of his rift with the other Brücke artists in 1913, after he assigned himself the leading role in the group's history, which Kirchner narrated in the Chronik der Brücke. Nevertheless, one of the earliest sketches Kirchner selected for Dr. Bauer's book portrays his former friend Erich Heckel, clearly recognizable from his high forehead, tousled hair and goatee beard. Kirchner often revisited his Brücke paintings in the Swiss years, modifying and repainting them in order – in his mind – to improve and update them in the light of his current style. Probably he refreshed and added emphasis to a couple of the Bauer sketches (notably 3 and 26), but the vast majority are in a pristine state, sometimes cut out of larger sheets, but otherwise valued by the artist, it seems, precisely for their improvisational and authentic qualities. Hence sketch 22, a quick notation in pen and ink on the back of an envelope, is marked by the artist's finger or thumbprints.

More developed sketches, such as the brothel scene in sketch 35, offer further glimpses into Kirchner's intimate studio world. In this case a blue transfer drawing is evident on the back of the sheet, which Kirchner used to prepare a woodcut version of the same motif. Sketch 32, rendered in watercolour on ruled paper, depicts an intriguing variation of a street scene that features in an undated letter from Kirchner to Heckel, where he describes an encounter with a prostitute who takes him back to her room. Annemarie Dube-Heynig correctly dates this letter May 1910, and both sketches, in this instance, rather than recording an immediate visual experience, are probably drawn from memory, re-invoking a similar composition in Kirchner's painting Street, Dresden from 1908, overpainted in 1919 (A. Dube-Heynig, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Postkarten und Briefe an Erich Heckel im Altonaer Museum in Hamburg, Cologne, 1984, pp. 242 - 243). The association between street scenes and prostitution, which came to the fore in Kirchner's famous series of Berlin paintings, thus has its roots in the Dresden years.

The practice of quick, notational sketching, which characterizes the majority of the drawings in Dr. Bauer's book, lies at the core of the Expressionist worldview. Indeed, Kirchner's continuing high estimation of his early drawings in a period when he felt compelled to 'correct' and update his early paintings indicates their particular significance. The earliest works by Kirchner and other members of the Brücke group were so-called quarter-hour nudes, which replaced the convention of meticulously realistic, academic life drawing with quick, spontaneous studies of girls moving around the studio and in natural poses, such as we find in Kirchner's drawing on the reverse of sketch 14 in the Bauer volume. The idea was to capture the essence of the subject as quickly as possible, concentrating on the totality of the experience rather than details. Indeed, as Kirchner later explained in an essay on his drawings, which he published in 1920 under his pseudonym Louis de Marsalle, individual elements in his most notational sketches only make sense in the context of the whole design. Kirchner's analysis of his drawing of a Chinese juggler (which is similar to several drawings in the Bauer volume, such as Tänzerin, sketch 19, and Zirkusszene, sketch 25), presents his alternative to realism: 'What is there is not the real or apparent outline of reality, it is a new form of personal phantasy, a hieroglyph which in itself is non-representational. And yet this non-representational hieroglyph has the power to simulate two Chinese on a variety stage flooded with light, one juggling plates in the foreground, the other assisting him' (E. L. Kirchner as Louis de Marsalle quoted in "Zeichnungen von E. L. Kirchner," in Genius, 1920, p. 216, reprinted in L. Grisebach, op. cit., p. 185f).

Kirchner elaborated elsewhere on his understanding of hieroglyphs, not as predictable pictorial symbols in the traditional sense, but rather as vital graphic signs generated by his passionate engagement with life ('aus der lebendigen Liebe zum Leben') that convey an intensified equivalent rather than an imitation of the world. Kirchner associated a range of expressions with the activity of drawing, such as 'experience', 'excitement', 'fantasy', 'vision' and 'ecstasy', which all relate to the extraordinary exuberance of the artist's fleeting sketches. Nevertheless, his sense of immediate visual excitement is combined with acute pictorial sophistication. In the Bauer volume the dialogue between line and colour that runs like a leitmotif through the book demonstrates Kirchner's instinctive mastery. Even his quickest sketches often employ mixed media, including various combinations of pencil, ink, crayon and watercolour. In Markt in Dresden (sketch 7), for example, the artist begins with a swathe of mauve watercolour, on top of which he delineates the activity of the market in a swiftly applied pen and ink sketch. Two slashes of red gouache are added to the skirts of the women in the foreground to bring them into focus, and finally a touch of green is applied to the middle ground, so that a complementary contrast resonates across the page. Colour is never simply used to 'fill in' a line drawing; rather it plays an integral role in multi-layered yet spontaneous compositions, which, in this instance, brilliantly captures the artist's experience of a Dresden street.

Kirchner considered his drawings as 'the most pure, most beautiful aspect of his work' (E. L. Kirchner quoted in L. Grisebach, ibid., p. 188) and elsewhere described them as 'the absolute key to Kirchner's oeuvre' (E. L. Kirchner as Louis de Marsalle, Preface to the exh. cat. 'Ausstellung der Graphik von E. L. Kirchner', Galerie Aktuarius, Zurich, June to July 1927, reprinted in Davoser Tagebuch, op. cit., p. 226). The selection of 40, small, mostly notational sketches in his gift to Dr. Bauer, which were chosen and assembled by the artist into a sequence that reflects his own priorities, does indeed represent a microcosm of Kirchner's world. Made for a great connoisseur of Kirchner's work, the Bauer sketchbook gives us in effect a 'private view' of the artist's studio, and offers many insights into his studio practice and his thoughts. Poignantly, Kirchner made and presented the collection to Frédéric Bauer in a moment of calm before the storm. The compilations of sketches in two volumes that Kirchner gifted to his doctor in 1932 and 1933 afforded him an overview and an opportunity to reassess his drawings just before the dark clouds of prejudice and violence descended over Europe with Hitler's ascent to power. Five years later, after seeing his life's work defamed in the Degenerate Art Exhibition, Kirchner took his own life. The bright, colourful and exuberant pages of the Bauer sketchbook give us a glimpse of the artist's world before disaster struck.

Jill Lloyd, Ph. D.
Expressionist scholar and curator.