Ludwig Meidner

Paul Cassirer, Berlin (by 1918)
Gertrude von Lutzau, Berlin and Rodenkirchen am Main (possibly acquired in 1918)
Richard Feigen Gallery, New York (acquired from the above after 1957)
Dr. and Mrs. Gerhard Strauss, Milwaukee
Acquired from the above by the present owner in June 1975

Berlin, Paul Cassirer, Ludwig Meidner, 1918
Milwaukee, Art Center, Ludwig Meidner: Apocalyptic German Expressionist (From the Collection of Marvin and Janet Fishman), 1976
Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Art in a Turbulent Era: German and Austrian Expressionism, 1978
Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Museum of Art, The Graphic Work and Paintings of Ludwig Meidner, 1978, no. 2
Milwaukee, Fine Arts Galleries, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, German Expressionism from Milwaukee Collections, 1979, no. 90
New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and San Francisco, Museum of Modern Art, Expressionism: A German Intuition 1905-1920, 1980-81, no. 301a
London, Royal Academy of Arts and Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie, German Art in the 20^th Century: Painting and Sculpture 1905-1985, 1985-86, no. 74
Berlin, Berlinische Galerie, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Photographie und Architektur im Martin-Gropius-Bau, Ich und die Stadt: Mensch und Grossstadt in der deutschen Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, 1987, no. 135
Atlanta, High Museum of Art, Art in Berlin 1815-1989, 1989-90, no. 35
Milwaukee, Art Museum (and travelling), From Expressionism to Resistance: Art in Germany 1909-1936 - The Marvin and Janet Fishman Collection, 1990-92, no. 100, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Paris, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Figures du Moderne, L'Expressionnisme en Allemagne 1905-1914, 1992-93, no. 381, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Altes Museum, Die letzten Tage der Menschheit - Bilder des 1. Weltkrieges, 1994 
The Hague, Museum Paleis Lange Voorhut and Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Art et Résistance, Les peintres allemandes de l'entre-deux-guerres - La Collection Marvin et Janet Fishman, 1995-96, no. 101, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Venice, Palazzo Grassi, German Expressionism: Art and Society, 1997-98, no. 6, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Munich, Haus der Kunst, Die Nacht, 1998-99, no. 338, illustrated in the catalogue
New York, The Jewish Museum, Berlin Metropolis: Jews and the New Culture, 1999-2000, no. 130, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie, Der Potsdamer Platz. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner und der Untergang Preussens, 2001, no. 2, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Vienna, Jüdisches Museum der Stadt Wien, Im Nacken das Sternemeer: Ludwig Meidner Ein deutscher Expressionist, 2001-2002, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Milwaukee, Patrick & Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art, German and Austrian Art of the 1920s and 1930s; The Marvin Fishman Collection, 2002, no. 55
Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum, Ludwig Meidner from the Marvin & Janet Fishman Collection, 2005

Frank Whitford, Expressionistic Portraits, London, 1987, illustrated p. 49
The Apocalyptic Landscapes of Ludwig Meidner (exhibition catalogue), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1989-90, no. 14, illustrated, p. 18
Gerda Breuer and Ines Wagemann (ed.), Ludwig Meidner. Zeichner, Maler, Literat (exhibition catalogue), Darmstadt, Mathildenhöhe, 1991, vol. II, illustrated in colour p. 47
Stephanie Barron and Wolf-Dieter Dube, German Expressionism: Art and Society, London, 1997, no. 6, illustrated in colour p. 157

In 1912 Meidner executed some of his first self-portraits in his Berlin studio, which marked the beginning of a long period of introspection. During the pre-war years in Berlin, the artist suffered immense financial difficulties, and the accounts of his working methods reveal his physical and mental state, as reflected in his self-portraits. Meidner worked mostly at night, in the glow of the gaslight, alone and undisturbed, surrounded only by his few most important possessions that hardly filled his studio. Impoverished, undernourished and of ill-health, he would pour all his energy onto the canvas, sometimes leaving aside his brush and painting with his bare hands. As Eberhard Roters comments:

'Far from alleviating his wretched physical state, his work exacerbates it; but in his creative frenzy he transcends it all, liberating his inner self and finding release in raising his sensations from the physical to the metaphysical and from the psychic to the metapsychic. This struggle that the artist wages every night in his studio - the battle against canvas, paint, and himself - is an orgy of solitude, an orgy of introversion' (Eberhard Roters, The Apocalyptic Landscapes of Ludwig Meidner (exhibition catalogue), Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles, 1989, p. 71).

The self-portrait was a subject much followed by the Expressionist artists. Drawing on the great tradition of Van Gogh, artists such as Kokoschka, Schiele, Dix, Beckmann and Meidner took up this theme, creating some of the most haunting and intense images of the period. The present work brings to mind the quintessential images of the tormented, isolated artist, as epitomised in the self-portraits by Van Gogh, which certainly played an influential role in Meidner's artistic development (fig. 2). Mein Nachtgesicht bears similarities to Van Gogh's self-portraits in pose, colouration and the mood of anxiety and despair. The expressive brushstrokes, reminiscent of Van Gogh, here become almost violent, as they evoke the artist's features, strangely distorted by the gaslight. His glowing, illuminated face emerges dramatically from the background of the studio immersed in nocturnal darkness, his deep, sunken eyes stare wide open with a tormented look at the viewer. This suggestion of struggle and self-torment is further underlined by the brisk, determined brushstrokes of bright yellow and green against the dark background. The red of his neck rises towards his face, as if to engulf it in flames.

Discussing Meidner's self-portraits, Eberhard Roters says: 'The wildest of them date from those prewar years: they are audacious landscapes of the human face' (The Apocalyptic Landscapes of Ludwig Meidner, p. 72). Indeed, these images depict the same state of the artist's mind as that apparent in his Apocalyptic Landscapes of 1912 and 1913. The images of destruction, violence and turmoil of Meidner's urban scenes are now brought into the artist's studio and presented in a more direct and intimate manner. Through this haunting image Meidner allows us a view not only of his own tormented existence, but also of the overall catastrophe that was already looming over Europe.

In a letter from Meidner to Richard Feigen of 29th September 1957 (fig. 6), the artist writes of the present work and its owner at the time, Gertrude von Lutzau thus: 'For forty years she has possessed a wonderful, ecstatic self-portrait of me (from 1913), which is as intensive as an old gothic master. When I saw it three years ago (I had not seen it since 1918) I broke out in tears' (translated from German).