Max Ernst

Galerie Bernheim-Jeune & Cie, Paris

Maurice Lefebvre-Foinet, Paris (acquired by 1962)

Yvonne Pommerantz, Paris

Galerie Beyeler, Basel

Private Collection, Paris

Sale: Zurich, Germann Auktionen, October 24, 1979, lot 22

Runkel Hue-Williams, Ltd., London

Sale: Christie's, London, December 3, 1984, lot 44

The Elkon Gallery, New York

Sale: Christie's, New York, May 8, 1991, lot 45

Private Collection (acquired at the above sale and sold: Sotheby's, London, February 5, 2007, lot 93)

Acquired at the above sale

Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz Museum & Zurich, Kunsthaus, Max Ernst, 1962-63, no. 100

Basel, Galerie Beyeler, Max Ernst, 1974, no. 36, illustrated in color in the catalogue

Basel, Galerie Beyeler, Paysages après l'impressionnisme, 1975, no. 27

Basel, Galerie Beyeler, Max Ernst, Landschaften, 1985, no. 41, illustrated in color in the catalogue

Madrid, Fundación Juan March, Max Ernst, 1986, no. 64

London, Gallery Runkel Hue-Williams, Max Ernst, Paintings, Sculptures, Works on Paper, 1988-89, illustrated in color in the catalogue

New York, The Elkon Gallery, Max Ernst, Sunset and Twilights (The Postwar Years), 1989-90, illustrated in color in the catalogue

Werner Spies, Günter & Sigrid Metken, Max Ernst, Oeuvre -Katalog, Werke 1954-1963, Houston, 1998, no. 3313, illustrated p. 138

Excellent condition. Original canvas. The surface is clean and fresh and there is no evidence of retouching under ultra-violet light.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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La Mare aux grenouilles brilliantly embodies the artist's preoccupations in the years following World War II. Though he relies upon the spontaneity of his innovative techniques, Ernst presents a palpable scene in the composition. A semi-obscured orb presents the moon as seen through the forest, the trees then reflected in the shimmering surface of the pond along the lower edge. As the title suggests, frogs can be discerned on the surface of the water. Ernst is able here to revitalize the medium with radical techniques while retaining clear figuration.

Ernst's works of the 1950s, following his return to a Europe in the throes of reconstruction, now exhibited a stylistic duality of composition and disintegration - a suitable metaphor for the times.  According to Werner Spies, his mood during this period "was an ambivalent one, which [Ernst] paraphrased as follows: 'From 'The Age of Anxiety' to 'The Childhood of Art' only half a rotation of the orthochromatic wheel is required. Between the Massacre of the Innocents and Stepping Through the Looking-Glass lies an interval merely of one luminous night.' ... Ernst remained true to his early decision to strive for a symbolic painting in which open questions, and hence the unfathomable obscurity of existence, took precedence over simplistic positivist explanations and definitive stylistic results" (W. Spies, Max Ernst, A Retrospective (exhibition catalogue), London, 1991, p. 252).

The present work demonstrates the technique of grattage that Ernst had created during the early days of the Surrealist movement. Grattage was first developed by Ernst in the mid-1920s as a painterly response to the Surrealist concept of automatism. Grattage is the oil paint version of frottage, the technique Ernst first employed in pencil and paper: "One rainy day in 1925 Ernst was first inspired to explore the possibilities of frottage by the look of the grooves in the well-scrubbed floor of his hotel room at the seashore in Pornic. Attracted by the open structure of the grain, he rubbed it, using paper and pencil, and then reinterpreted the results. As he developed the procedure, he used a variety of new elements to start with - stale bread crumbs, grained leather, striated glassware, a straw hat, twine - always transforming the results so that whatever lay beneath his paper experienced a metamorphosis. The characteristics of these objects got lost in the process. Unrefined textures turned into more precise shapes. The grain of wood became the tossing surface of the sea, the scaly pattern of the weave of a straw hat became a cypress tree, the texture of twine became another kind of grain even a horse... These works are sensual and tactile, with images of rubbed objects that appear as ghostly traces of form" (Werner Spies, 'Nightmare and Deliverence' in Max Ernst: A Retrospective (exhibition catalogue), New York, 2005, pp. 12-13).