卡爾·施密特·羅特盧夫 | 《退潮的沼澤》

馮·德·海特男爵，伍珀塔爾
柯特·福伯格博士、教授，杜塞爾多夫及聖莫里茲（1960年或之前購入）
私人收藏，德國
拍賣：柏林維拉·格里斯拍賣行，1995年11月24日，拍品編號23
拍賣：柏林維拉·格里斯拍賣行，2013年11月28日，拍品編號10
現藏家購自上述拍賣

Munich, Galerie Hans Goltz, 2. Ausstellung, 1913, no. 139 (titled Watt)

Berlin, Kunst-Salon Fritz Gurlitt, Kollektionen, 1914, no. 41 (titled Watt)

Essen, Museum Folkwang, Dem wiedereröffneten Museum Folkwang zum Gruss, 1960, illustrated in the catalogue (titled Am Watt bei Dangast)

Düsseldorf, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Zehn Jahre Grosser Kunstpreis des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen, 1962, no. 42, illustrated in the catalogue

London, Tate Gallery, Painters of the Brücke, 1964, no. 260

Frankfurt, Kunstverein, Vom Impressionismus zum Bauhaus. Meisterwerke aus deutschem Privatbesitz, 1966, no. 75, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Düsseldorf, Galerie Wilhelm Grosshennig, Sonderausstellung: S. Rottluff. Gemälde aus den Jahren 1907–1961, 1969, illustrated in colour on the cover of the catalogue

Munich, Haus der Kunst & Paris, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Europäischer Expressionismus / L’Expressionnisme européen, 1970, no. 138 (in Munich), no. 127 (in Paris), illustrated in colour in the catalogue

卡爾·魯爾伯格，《當今繪畫入門》，杜塞爾多夫及維也納，1965年，第128頁後載圖

《呂貝克奧韋爾貝克學會五十年，1918-1968》，呂貝克，1968年，第35頁載彩圖

愛華德·拉斯克，《印象主義》，慕尼黑，1971年，圖版18載彩圖（畫名《沙灘及退潮》）

唐納德·E·戈登，《現代藝術展，1900-1916》，慕尼黑，1974年，第II冊，第732及821頁列出（畫名《沼澤》）

格哈德·懷特克，《施密特·羅特盧夫：奧登堡1907-1912年》，美茵茲，1995年，品號285，第549頁載彩圖

Painted in 1912, Watt bei Ebbe exemplifies the energy and radical experimentation that defined Schmidt-Rottluff’s involvement with Die Brücke. Along with Kirchner and Heckel, Schmidt-Rottluff was one of the founders of the movement, pioneering a new form of art that promoted freedom of expression and rejected the traditions of academic painting that had been central to their artistic education in turn of the century Dresden. ‘With faith in progress and in a new generation of creators and spectators we call together all youth,’ Kirchner wrote in the programme of Die Brücke in 1906, continuing: ‘As youth, we carry the future and want to create for ourselves freedom of life and of movement against the long established older forces. Everyone who reproduces that which drives him to creation with directness and authenticity belongs to us’ (quoted in C. Harrison & P. Wood (eds.), Art in Theory, 1900-1990, Oxford & Cambridge, 1993, pp. 67-68). 

Schmidt-Rottluff spent the summers between 1907 and 1912 in the small coastal town of Dangast often in the company of Heckel. The wild and untouched nature of the surrounding countryside was a significant source of inspiration and the related paintings show an increasing freedom of expression articulated through a visionary use of colour. In Watt bei Ebbe broad swathes of red and orange are juxtaposed against gloriously deep blues and blacks to create a work of remarkable emotional intensity.

In their experimentation with colour the Brücke artists were keeping pace with prevailing currents of European modernism and particularly the painting of the Post and Neo-Impressionists. ‘Van Gogh held a particular appeal for this new generation of German artists, as the Expressionist writer Ernst Blass recalled: ‘Van Gogh stood for expression and experience as opposed to Impressionism and Naturalism. Flaming concentration, youthful sincerity, immediacy, depth; exhibition and hallucination… The courage of one’s own means of expression’ (E. Blass, quoted in Expressionism in Germany and France (exhibition catalogue), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles & The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, 2014, p. 48). A few months after the founding of Die Brücke in 1905, they had had the opportunity to see his work first-hand at the Van Gogh retrospective held at the Galerie Arnold in Dresden. This proved a pivotal moment for the group and had considerable influence on their development of an expressive aesthetic that was characterised by a flattened perspective. Equally, in the beautiful simplicity and rich colouration of Watt bei Ebbe the influence of Gauguin (fig. 2) is also apparent. Whilst the members of Die Brücke absorbed these influences, they also invested their art with a freshness and naïvety that expressed the self-confidence of youth. Theirs was the first distinctly German artistic movement of the twentieth century, and their bold aesthetic established Schmidt-Rottluff and his colleagues as a reckonable force among the European avant-garde. 

Perhaps most significant, however, is the correspondence with the vivid compositions of the Fauves (fig. 1), which the Brücke artists are likely to have seen as early as 1906. They also shared with them an interest in the ‘primitive’ art of the past as a means of confronting the alienation of modern life which for the German artists was made manifest in their revival of older media, such as their use of woodcut prints. This influence is clearly felt in Watt bei Ebbe where Schmidt-Rottluff builds the composition with a remarkable economy of means that borders on abstraction, making full use of light and dark contrasts to achieve his pictorial vision.

In the present work Schmidt-Rottluff embraces a Fauve approach to colour but the pictorial clarity is indicative of the singular style that defines his work of this period. Barry Herbert observed this tendency when writing about Schmidt-Rottluff’s Brücke canvases: ‘His work reached an extreme pitch of emotional intensity in its semi-abstract handling of form and colour without ever quite losing contact with tangible reality. The brilliantly coloured, loosely applied paint communicates that feverish involvement with the subject that distinguished the young German artist's vision from the more impersonal approach favoured by Matisse, and identified him as, above all, a direct successor to van Gogh and Munch’ (B. Herbert, German Expressionism, Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter, London, 1983, p. 118).