Hans Thoma

Karlsruhe, Badener Kunstverein, 1909, no. 445 (lent by Dr E Nicolai, according to labels on the reverse of the frame).

‘A sketching trip to the Gulf of Spezia was the culmination of my first trip to Italy. The azure sea, seen from the cliffs of Lerici and from Porto Venere, left yet another new impression on me. Together with my companions Lang and Heinrich I sketched here quite a bit. The singular fragrance of the olive groves in blossom mingles with the sea air wafting out of the blue; the bees hum in the yellowy white petals on their blue pistils; a feeling of boundlessness overcomes us, muting our senses and allowing us to lose ourselves in the deepest solitude of being.’

(Hans Thoma in his autobiography, Im Herbste des Lebens, 1908, pp. 63-64)

Painted in 1880, this work was inspired by the artist’s first trip to Italy in 1874 and is based on a drawing he made at Lerici, on the coast of the Gulf of La Spezia in Liguria, dated Lerici 6. Juni 1874.

Thoma was a friend of the painting’s first owner Eduard von Nicolai (1858-1914), president of the Generalintendanz (intendancy) in charge of the civil list of the Grand Duke of Baden, and in whose family the painting has remained ever since. Several pieces of correspondence survive, including a postcard from Thoma to Eduard von Nicolai dated 1901, and one to Eduard’s son Helmuth (1892-1948), thanking him for his birthday wishes on the occasion of Thoma's eightieth birthday.

This work is sold with a copy of Ludwig Justi’s Hans Thoma: hundert Gemälde aus deutschem Privatbesitz dedicated to the present owner's grandmother, Fella von Nicolai (Helmuth’s wife), on the occasion of her birthday on 1 December 1922.