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LYONEL FEININGER (1871-1956) Die Zeitungsleser (the newspaper readers) signed and dated "Feininger 09" (upper right) oil on canvas 19 3/4 x 24 7/8 in. (50.2 x 63.2 cm) painted in 1909 Provenance Estate of the Artist Acquavella Galleries, Inc., New York Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited New York, Acquavella Galleries, Inc. and Washington, D.C., The Phillips Collection, Exhibition Lyonel Feininger, October 15, 1985-February 9, 1986, no. 23 (illustrated in color) Weimar, Kunsthaus Apolda Avantgarde, Feininger im Weimarer Land, June 20-September 12, 1999, p. 133, no. 54 (illustrated in color, p. 60) Literature Hans Hess, Lyonel Feininger, Stuttgart, 1959, p. 252, no. 42 Ulrich Luckhardt, Lyonel Feininger, Munich, 1989, p. 54, no. 3 (illustrated in color) In 1906, Feininger traveled to Paris to develop his identity as a painter. While there, he was drawn to Matisse's circle and became friendly with Purrmann, Moll, and Levi. He returned to Berlin in 1908. It was during a subsequent visit to Paris, in 1911, that he became fully aware of Cubism, which would become the dominant influence in his oeuvre. The present work, therefore, belongs to a special moment within the artist's career, painted between these two most decisive Parisian sojourns. Wolf-Dieter Dube commented on this period: "After his return to Berlin, his experience as a cartoonist continued to affect his work markedly for several years, up to 1911. Most of Feininger's paintings at this period were of figures, transported to a world of fantasy, 'mummery pictures' as he called them himself. His use of color clearly reveals a familiarity with the Fauves. He also sketched landscapes in homage to Van Gogh" (W.-D. Dube, The Expressionists, London, 1998, p. 168). Die Zeitungsleser, with its ravishing color sense, inventive treatment of landscape, and highly characteristic figuration, is one of Feininger's first fully mature works. The artist's excitement at having discovered his vocation is quite evident in the palpable energy of this canvas. It depicts the distinctive Peter and Paul Stadtkirche in Weimar, a motif that would fascinate the artist for the remainder of his career. In this respect, it differs from another version of the subject also titled Zeitungsleser I, 1908 (Hess no. 34), originally in the collection of Jacques Casper, Berlin, which portrayed figures in front of town houses rather than a church. According to Hess, the 1908 version was lost during the German occupation of Paris in World War II. Feininger had enjoyed a happy courtship with his beloved wife, Julia, in Weimar (fig. 1). Thereafter, he considered the town a joyous symbol of this period in his life. The optimistic note of the present work and others of a similar date are especially distinguished for their brilliant, Fauve-like palette. Indeed, the daring coloration in this painting bears comparison with the contemporaneous works being produced by the Brücke artists, Kirchner, Heckel, Schmidt-Rottluff, and Pechstein. 1909 marked the flowering of the Brücke movement, and it is in our version of Die Zeitungsleser that Feininger comes closest to the pure Expressionism of this movement. Feininger began his career as a political cartoonist in Berlin, contributing distinctive drawings to publications such as Berliner Tageblat, Ulk Lustige Blätter, and many others. His interest in the media and in the relationship between painting and the printed word, especially ephemeral newspapers, remained with him for many years. A later painting, Die Zeitungsleser II, 1916 (fig. 2), also explores the theme of townspeople mesmerized by the newspapers they are reading. In both paintings the people stride along forcefully, fully absorbed in the papers, as if hypnotized by their contents. However, Feininger's distinctive manipulation of scale is especially striking in our painting, lending the composition monumentality far beyond its scale. As Feininger himself declared: "...the slightest difference in relative proportions creates enormous differences with regard to the monumentality and intensity of the composition. Monumentality is not achieved by making things larger...but by contrasting large and small in the same composition" (quoted in Lyonel Feininger-Marsden Hartley, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1944, p. 18). The general public's fascination with scandal, something of particular relevance today, is one of Feininger's great subjects. The existence of a slightly earlier watercolor, Die Zeitungsleser, 1908, sheds considerable light on the subject and its source within the artist's imagination. In the watercolor, the names Moltke and Harden can be seen on the newspapers held by the principal figures in the composition. In 1908, two associates of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Eulenburg and Moltke, had brought a lawsuit against the writer Maximilian Harden because the latter had exposed their homosexual tendencies in the magazine Zukunft. This had caused such a sensation that every revelation was hungrily followed by the German public. All the paintings titled Zeitungsleser were likely inspired by this event. Feininger captures the instinctive sense of the public's fascination with scandal with remarkable force in the present picture. Die Zeitungsleser was also of great personal relevance to the artist. By 1905, while at the height of his success as a cartoonist for the very papers that were to thrive on the dissemination of scandalous material, Feininger despaired that his talent was being wasted. He decided to devote himself to painting rather than graphic work for the media: "I'm barely an artist...at any rate not in the tomfool jokes that I'm known for" (quoted in Wolf-Dieter Dube, op. cit., p. 168). Feininger's newspaper motifs must therefore also be regarded as a reminder of his ambivalent attitude towards his first career as a caricaturist. A letter to his wife dated 1905 expresses Feininger's wish to capture the magical appearance of the sky and demonstrates the extent of the pictorial ambitions, which are successfully realized in Die Zeitungsleser. He writes: "Sunset, everything in gold and purple half-tones, and in one spot, right in the very far distance...two or three rows of windows facing west, throwing back the gold of the sky like spears, transforming the whole picture in an indescribably beautiful tone. In the already dying eastern sky, the goodnight sky, there are suddenly pieces like jewels from the sun-irradiated western sky" (ibid.). On December 25, 1915, Feininger, clearly recognizing the strength of this composition, virtually repeated it in a watercolor and ink drawing that he titled Die MorgenZeitung (fig. 3). The provenance of die zeitungsleser is of great interest, and provides a moving testament to the extent of Feininger's travels. In 1937, he was forced to leave Germany because of the threat of persecution as a "Degenerate Artist." He left behind 54 works in the safekeeping of a student and friend, Hermann Klumpp, who lived in the small town of Quedlinburg, near Dessau. After Feininger had settled in New York, he sent for the pictures unsuccessfully, and after World War II Klumpp claimed them as his own. After many delays, legal proceedings were initiated in 1974, and in 1976 a final judgement declared all the works to be the property of the Feininger Estate. However, it was to be eight years before the East German Government would release the paintings, after the intervention of the United States State Department. They were finally delivered to New York in 1984. The following year, they were exhibited to great acclaim at Acquavella Galleries, New York, and at the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.