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PROPERTY OF A EUROPEAN PRIVATE COLLECTOR f - MAX SLEVOGT GERMAN, 1868-1932 STILL LEBEN MIT ROSEN (STILL LIFE WITH ROSES)

signed and dated Slevogt / 1904 u.l.

oil on canvas

PROVENANCE

Georg Schäfer collection, Schweinfurt
Acquired by the present owner in 1995
CATALOGUE NOTE

Painted in 1904, Still Life with Roses is an early example of Slevogt embracing the principles of Impressionism. While he had spent a term at the Academie Julian in Paris in 1889, it was not until he visited the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900 that he became fascinated by the work of Claude Monet and the French Impressionists and started concentrating on the elements of light and colour in his own paintings.

Among the French painters Slevogt looked to for inspiration were Edouard Manet and Henri Fantin-Latour, to whose still lifes the present work bears a striking resemblance (fig 1). Manet and Fantin re-invented the still life genre, making it the domaine par excellence of 'pure painting', of art for art's sake. The subject is reduced to its bare essentials, its significance none other than a means of exploring colours, volumes, and textures.

The New Painting in France influenced a generation of German artists, and along with Slevogt was championed by Lovis Corinth and Max Liebermann. The three artists were active in Berlin at the same time when the present work was painted, their shared ideas permeating one another's work. Together, they formed the core of the German Impressionist movement.

Fig. 1, Henri Fantin-Latour, Roses dans un vase, 1888 © Private Collection 341D05101