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1871-1956
REGENTAG AN DER SEE (RAINY DAY BY THE SEA)

45 by 70cm., 17 3/4 by 27 1/2 in.

Painted in 1914.

signed Feininger and dated 14 (lower right)

oil on canvas

To be included in the Lyonel Feininger Catalogue Raisonné being prepared by Achim Moeller under number 154.

PROVENANCE

Stefan Pauson, Bamberg, Germany & Giffnock, Glasgow
Galerie Fritz Nathan & Peter Nathan, Zurich (acquired from the above)
Acquired from the above by the father of the present owner circa 1967-68

LITERATURE

Hans Hess, Lyonel Feininger, London, 1961, no. 130, illustrated p. 259

NOTE

The sea, ships and people on the beach have always been important and recurring subject matters throughout Lyonel Feininger's oeuvre (fig. 4). Painted in 1914, Regentag an der See is a wonderful atmospheric example of paintings depicting the artist's favourite themes. The strong influence of Cubism in the composition of this work, the linear rhythm and the Futurist figures are characteristic of Feininger's signature style during this period. In May 1911, Feininger spent two weeks in Paris where he discovered Cubism - a style he had never encountered before, but which offered exactly what he was artistically looking for. In a letter written in 1913 to his friend called Churchill, Feininger relates his own progress step by step: 'My first pictures, after I commenced in oil, in April 1907, were caricatures after my drawings of such subject matter[s], made from time to time in 1908, I came to have the opportunity of drawing out of doors all summer and made very many notes and experimenting with colored outlines & contrasting surfaces', he goes on: '1909 I first commenced to sketch landscape, still decorative, worshipful of Van Gogh. 1910 I had attained to greater rhythm, somewhat neglecting color, of which I felt perfectly sure. 1911 my studies had brought me to the critical state where imitation of nature is imminent, but in that Spring I had gone to Paris for two weeks and found the art world agog with Cubism - a thing I had never heard even mentioned before, but which I had already, entirely intuitively, striven after for years' (cited in Hans Hess, op. cit., p. 52).

The most important event for Feininger of the year 1911 was the Salon des Indépendants in Paris from April until June, where he showed six of his paintings alongside works by artists, such as, Henri Matisse, Robert Delaunay and Wassily Kandinsky as well as the Cubists who were displaying their discoveries for the first time. The Cubists' concept of constructing a painting was very close to Feininger's passion for architecture, and enabled him to 'build' a picture piece by piece. Regentag an der See of 1914 can therefore be seen as a continuation of this compositional style after the artist's discovery of Cubism in 1911, but at the same time a characteristic example within Feininger's development and understanding of the notion of cubist compositions. Hans Hess described the newly gained spirit since 1911 as following: 'What mattered to the artists was the possibility of daring that had come into the world of painting. The break-up of form, the break-up of light, and the freedom to treat each picture as a new reality were common to all, and one pioneer gave courage to the others. What Feininger gained in Paris was new hope for his own endeavors. The year 1912 thus became a year of further experiments for Feininger' (Hess, op.cit., p. 53).

'In 1912 Feininger abandoned the carnival pictures. The human figure returned to the real world.' Hess noted: 'Feininger began to compose pictures with strollers and bathers at the seaside (fig. 2), unifying the movements of waves and people, the sky and boats, in one angular rhythm. In the first of these pictures, Angler mit blauem Fisch II (fig. 3), the carnival people once more come back into a picture; large figures on the shore are silhouetted against the sea. As a painting of space relations outside formal perspective the picture contains new thought' (Hess op.cit., p. 54). Hess observes further about the painter's works of 1914: 'A simultaneity of events creates a multitude of shapes, but remnants of observed reality remain. These are pictures of a transitional stage in which the past has not been overcome and the next step has not been taken. The solution for Feininger did not lie in the destruction of form but in the finding of new forms. Forms of observed and newly developed reality coexists in the picture' (Hess, op.cit., p. 72).

Regentag an der See is therefore both Cubist and Futurist in approach. In this work Feininger employs the new means of a Cubist composition and abandons the rules of classical perspective, and thus creates a flat surface in which the beach, the figures and the sea become one entity. The impressive composition of arranging the main group of figures in the painting in one vertical line fighting the strong wind and rain, all moving into opposite directions, creates an unparalleled dynamic and strength in the present work. At the same time this kind of composition can also be seen as a magnificent example of Modernism. The perspective of space and the interconnection of events appear to be Feininger's main interest in this painting. As Hess pointed out: 'The interpretation of events is a Futurist discovery (fig. 5), the revelation of a simultaneous view is a Cubist discovery, and the summary presentation of the sequence of events is Feininger's contribution' (Hess, op. cit., p. 53).

The artist was fascinated by the sea and the landscape of northern Germany. He visited on a regular basis the Baltic and North Sea from 1892 until 1936, just before he left Germany (fig. 1). The island Rügen inspired him as much as it had inspired Caspar David Friedrich before him. He also frequently returned to other seaside towns such as Ribnitz, Deep, Heringsdorf and Swinemünde, to name only a few places in northern Germany which became very important to the artist. Some of his most significant works, such as Regentag bei der See, resulted from visits to those towns and reflect Feininger's strong and lasting admiration for this part of the world and its elements.