Max Pechstein

Max Cuhrt, Berlin (commissioned from the artist in 1910)

Private Collection, Germany (by descent from the above)

Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2008

Berlin, III. Ausstellung der Neuen Sezession, 1911, no. 33 (titled Bildnis L.C.)

Vienna, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, 2009-2014 (on loan)

Johannes Sievers, ‘Die Neue Secession in Berlin’, in Der Cicerone, no. 3, 1911, mentioned p. 178

Aya Soika, Max Pechstein, Das Werkverzeichnis der Ölgemälde, Munich, 2011, vol. I, no. 1910/62, illustrated in colour p. 275

The canvas is unlined. There is a repaired tear with associated retouching on the sitter's lips and one further spot of retouching to her forehead, visible under ultra-violet light. Apart from a scratch in the lower part of the sitter's skirt, this work is in good and stable condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue illustration, although fresher in the original. The woman's dress has a brighter, more orange-red tonality in the original.
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Painted in 1910, at the height of Pechstein’s involvement with the Brücke group, Bildnis Charlotte Cuhrt is an impressive portrait painted in the bold colours that defined his work during this important period of his development. Charlotte was the daughter of one of Pechstein’s most important patrons, Max Cuhrt. Pechstein first met Cuhrt in 1908 as a result of his collaboration with the architect Bruno Schneidereit, and Cuhrt became an important supporter of the artist, providing him with a studio space in the building he had constructed on Kurfürstendamm 152 (fig. 1) and commissioning a number of paintings. The first of these was for a portrait of his wife which was incorporated into a sequence of wall panels that Schneidereit had designed for their Berlin apartment (fig. 2), and then in 1910 he commissioned a further portrait of his daughter. Charlotte, who would have been fifteen at the time, had been the subject of a series of lithographs that Pechstein produced the previous year, and the artist now embarked on the more ambitious project of a painting that would be incorporated into a piece of furniture that Schneidereit was designing as part of his overall vision for the Cuhrt household. Charlotte would later go on to marry a cousin of the architect, whose portrait Pechstein also painted in 1917.  

Pechstein was one of the leading members of Die Brücke, a group of avant-garde German artists, including Emil Nolde and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, whose work defined the German Expressionist movement during the early twentieth century. Inspired by the vivid palettes of the Fauve painters Matisse and van Dongen, in 1906 they banded together to form their own artistic group in Dresden. The group’s manifesto, written by Kirchner, heralded their revolutionary mission: ‘With faith in growth and in a new generation of creators and those who enjoy art, we call all young people together, and as the young that bear the future within it we shall create for ourselves elbowroom and freedom of life as opposed to the well-entrenched older forces. Everyone who renders directly and honestly whatever drives him to create is one of us’ (reprinted in Masterpieces of German Expressionism at the Detroit Institute of Arts, New York, 1982, p. 11). 

By 1910, the artist had developed his own distinct style of painting, which is demonstrated clearly in the present work. Pechstein spent the summer of 1910 with Heckel and Kirchner in Moritzburg, enjoying the atmosphere of mutual creativity and experimentation that it offered. Alongside the pictures he produced that summer and the canvases inspired by the nightlife of Berlin, Pechstein also painted a number of portraits of women including many of his wife Lotte (fig. 4). These compositions were noted for their powerful colour and dynamic execution, possibly reflecting the influence of van Dongen's radical use of colour in portraiture (fig. 3). They confirm Pechstein's position as a leading avant-garde artist. Throughout the year, Pechstein was also hard at work organizing the New Secession exhibitions and by the time of the third edition of the New Secession in February 1911 – in which Pechstein chose to exhibit the present work – the artist was considered to be the leading light of the German avant-garde.

In particular, his technical skill was widely praised, and often served to distinguish him from other painters of the Brücke group; Franz Marc commented on this in a letter to Kandinsky, writing: ‘In outward appearance, Pechstein is more beautiful [than Kirchner and Heckel], the composition more apparent, in his weaker works too obviously so, but his stronger works ring unfathomably like bells’ (quoted in B. Fulda & A. Soika, Max Pechstein: The Rise and Fall of Expressionism, Berlin, 2012, p. 120). This technical ability is particularly evident in the more formal composition of the present work where Pechstein creates a sense of depth and space through the skilful juxtaposition of bright planes of colour. Pechstein evidently felt this combination was particularly successful, going on to use it in a number of subsequent portraits including the 1911 painting Mädchen im Matrosenkleid and his Männerbildnis: Bruno Schneidereit (currently on loan to the Courtauld Gallery, London) of the following year.