Jakob Steinhardt

Sale: Christie's, Tel Aviv, 10th April 1999, lot 14
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Ziva Amishai-Maisels, 'Steinhardt's Wars – Reality and Allegory,' in Jakob Steinhardt: German Expressionist in Israel (working title; exhibition catalogue) Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 2010, mentioned

The canvas is not lined. There is a thumbnail-sized area of retouching to cover a paint loss between the woman’s head and the child on her right, towards the centre of the composition. There is a small 2 by 0.5cm. line of retouching in the foam of a wave at the right below the centre. There is a 1cm. thin minor tear in the canvas towards the upper centre. All retouching is visible under UV light. Apart from light vertical stretcher bar marks in the centre and craquelure to the paint surface, this work is in good overall condition.
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The Flood was painted around 1912, the year Steinhardt joined with Ludwig Meidner and Richard Yantur in Berlin, forming 'Die Pathetiker'.  This group of dedicated Expressionists were known for their apocalyptic paintings.  The works that Steinhardt and his 'Pathetiker' colleagues executed during that year are full of tragic and grotesque scenes of destruction and calamity that feature dark-skinned, distorted, and tortured figures reminiscent of Cain and Job.  This painting is also biblical, yet it is more Romantic than Expressionist.  Evidence suggests that it is actually one of the earlier 'Pathetiker' paintings by Steinhardt. 

The coiled composition of the waves and the people drowning are familiar in the work of William Blake and William Turner, while the density of desperate figures is reminiscent of Delacroix and Gericault's French Romanticism; 'Medusa's Raft' for example.  Steinhardt's paintings appear to be a conscious and highly successful effort to try his hand at this heroic genre of painting he came to know during his European travels.  The deepest roots lie in Michelangelo's 'Day of Judgement' and in Reuben's paintings of retribution.  Steinhardt here turns the waves of the sea into monsters: the concentric structures working collectively with the diagonal of the horizon and the triangulation of left-sided figures.  The composition creates a sense of sweeping movement, intensifying the drama of Steinhardt's canvas.  The sun is hidden in the distance, as a subdued, polyphonic lighting, which illuminates the figure collapsing in the foreground, and the masses drowning in the centre. Steinhardt's influences are apparent, as are his innovations, defining this work as an exemplary piece of Expressionist painting.

Fig. 1, Ludwig Meidner, Apokalyptische Landschaft (Apocolyptic Landscape), oil on canvas, Private Collection. Sold: Sotheby's, London, 7th February 20006, lot 17