Wilhelm Lehmbruck - Frauenbüste (Büste Frau L.)

Wilhelm Lehmbruck

Frauenbüste (Büste Frau L.)
Circa 1910

Marble. Height 80 cm. Unsigned. - In excellent condition.

“Sculpture, like every art, is the highest expression of its time.” Wilhelm Lehmbruck

Today Wilhelm Lehmbruck is considered the most important German sculptor of the 20th century. His “Frauenbüste (Büste Frau L.)”, which is coming up for auction, is an outstanding work in many respects. This bust modelled after Lehmbruck’s wife Anita (1879-1961) is among the extremely rare, privately owned sculptures personally executed by Lehmbruck in white marble. In addition to the brilliant execution in marble confirmed by Dietrich Schubert, the author of the artist’s catalogue raisonné, the work also possesses an excellent provenance. It comes from the collection of Cologne’s renowned industrialist and art patron Hermann Hertz (1856-1925), who purchased “Frauenbüste (Büste Frau L.)” from the 1912 Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne, which was a central event for modern art. The artwork has remained in the family for 114 years: it is the fourth generation of Hertz’s descendants who have now entrusted it to Kunsthaus Lempertz.

Lehmbruck’s Fresh Artistic and Personal Start in Paris in 1910
“Frauenbüste (Büste Frau L.)” is among Lehmbruck’s most important works of sculpture from the period around 1910. The sculptor had moved from Düsseldorf to Paris with his family in April of that year in order to free himself from a form of sculpture trapped in the academic tradition of the 19th century and to discover new artistic impulses. Accordingly, he quickly established contact with Alexander Archipenko, familiarised himself with Aristide Maillol’s female nudes and explored Auguste Rodin’s sculptural understanding of the figure. Shortly after arriving in Paris, Lehmbruck created the well-known “Große Stehende” (WVZ 51), which immediately brought him a great deal of recognition at the Parisian Salon.
He also created a number of torsos in 1910, including “Frauenbüste (Büste Frau L.)”, which he commissioned to be cast in bronze and cast stone bound with cement. During this same period Lehmbruck used a bright-white marble, which he very rarely employed, to create “Frauenbüste (Büste Frau L.)” with a slight but precise modification to the angle of the neck and the direction of the gaze. In contrast to the female sculptures created before 1910, he conceived this torso with truncated arms of different lengths and an emphatically tilted head. Its gently subdued movement is further underscored through the polished, slightly shimmering marble. As Nina Schallenberg writes of the cast-stone version in Berlin’s Nationalgalerie, Lehmbruck has “succeeded in causing the figure to manifest itself as the protagonist of an undefined but nevertheless moving narrative” (https://smb.museum-digital.de/object/273964).

The 1912 Sonderbund Exhibition in Cologne
Wilhelm Lehmbruck was represented by five of his most recent sculptures and two paintings at the Sonderbund exhibition. Besides “Frauenbüste (Büste Frau L.)”, he had selected “Große Kniende” (dated to 1911), “Weiblicher Torso”, a bronze cast of “Lebensgroßer Torso” and a “Junges Weib” realised in cast stone: these works could be seen in galleries 5, 10 and 21 of the exhibition (1912. Mission Moderne. Die Jahrhundertschau des Sonderbundes, exh. cat. Wallraf Richartz Museum & Fondation Corboud, Köln 2012, p. 612). Lehmbruck was aware of the significance of this show in the exhibition space next to the Aachener Tor, and he accordingly travelled from Paris to Cologne in July 1912: it featured 650 artworks by 153 international and, at that time, highly modern artists, including Vincent van Gogh (125 works), Paul Gauguin (25 works), Edvard Munch (32 works), Pablo Picasso (16 works) and Wassily Kandinsky (2 works). In addition to a documented meeting with Erich Heckel and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (photo), he could also have met Hermann Hertz at the exhibition.

Hermann Hertz – Co-Founder of the Sonderbund Exhibition, Patron and Collector
Hermann Hertz and his family belonged to Cologne’s educated, Jewish bourgeoisie. Born in Hildesheim in 1856, he grew up there and then moved to Cologne in 1878/89, where he and Max Rosenberg founded a factory for manufacturing corsets and a company for selling them: with 600 employees and exports to France, England and Switzerland, they were highly successful. He had already become interested in modern art early on and he first became active in the association “Die Gilde”, the “Westdeutscher Bund für angewandte Kunst”, which understood itself as a coalition of patrons. As an art patron, Hertz was also among the founders and supporters of the Sonderbund exhibition, defined its concept and was appointed to be its treasurer. When the discussion turned to the participation of what were then contemporary artists, he represented the “progressive” camp, together with Alfred Hagelstange (the director of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum), Richard Reiche of Wuppertal and Alfred Flechtheim. Hertz purchased the marble “Frauenbüste (Büste Frau L.)”, which was exhibited in Gallery 21 under the number 600, from Lehmbruck directly from the exhibition.
The purchase of this bust was not an isolated incident. Over time, Hertz had built up an extensive collection that contained works by Eugène Boudin, Paula Modersohn-Becker, George Minne, Ernst Barlach, George Grosz, Max Slevogt, Max Liebermann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Maurice de Vlaminck. As Hermann von Wedderkop writes in the magazine “Querschnitt”, his “home was simultaneously a museum […]. The art associations in which he was a member signified a welcome addition. Hermann Hertz was a sociable person […] and became a human bridge between old Cologne and Hagelstange” (Comprehensive Research Dossier, p. 8).
When Hertz died in 1925, his son Walter Hertz (1895-1986) inherited the marble bust. After the Nazis seized power, the Hertz family – Walter with his wife Dorothea and daughter Ursula – fled to the Netherlands in 1936 and to Brussels in 1940. Although Belgium was occupied by the Nazis, the family was able to survive in hiding and rescue the marble “Frauenbüste (Büste Frau L.)” in spite of their difficult situation. The work was at Kunsthaus Lempertz for the first time in 1986, in order to be inspected for the catalogue raisonné that was being prepared at that time. That is when the expert and author Dietrich Schubert was able to examine it for the first time, and he included it in the catalogue as number 50C.

“Frauenbüste (Büste Frau L.)” is the first sculpture following Lehmbruck’s fresh artistic start in which he primarily found inspiration in Maillol. Its slightly inclined head with an inward gaze makes it one of the first sculptures of inner absorption that are so characteristic of his work. With its execution in marble and provenance from the collection of Hermann Hertz, it represents a highlight of 20th-century German sculpture.

Catalogue Raisonné

Schubert 50 C

Certificate

We would like to thank Dietrich Schubert, Heidelberg, and Christoph Brockhaus, Mülheim an der Ruhr, for their advice.

Provenance

Collection Hermann Hertz, Cologne (since 1912); Family ownership Germany/the Netherlands/Belgium by direct descent since

Literature

Kunst und Künstler 1913, p. 194, with illus.; Dietrich Schubert, Die Kunst Lehmbrucks, Dresden/Worms 1990, p. 149-150; Susanne Schiller/Roland Dorn, Stiftung und Sammlung Sally Falk, Mannheim 1994, p. 80; Barbara Schaefer (ed.), 1912. Mission Moderne. Die Jahrhundertschau des Sonderbundes, exib. cat. Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne 2012, p. 612, no. 601A, with illus.; Marion Bornscheuer, Wilhelm Lehmbruck als Marmorbildhauer?, Norderstedt 2012, p. 19, with illus.