Lot 1259 | Water Lilies

HAGEMEISTER, KARL
Werder/Havel 1848 - 1933


Title: Water Lilies.
Date: Um 1902.
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Measurement: 53 x 78cm.
Notation: Signed lower right: K. Hagemeister.
Frame/Pedestal: Framed.
Verso:
On the stretcher note of Galerie Eduard Schulte with numbering "S 200".

Certificate:
Hendrikje Warmt, Berlin 12 September 2021, with cat. rais. no. WARMT G 367.

Provenance:
Private ownership, Germany.

Today, Karl Hagemeister from Brandenburg is one of the most important German Impressionists - but he only achieved fame and honour late in his life. Nevertheless, he was very well connected with his fellow painters early on and in 1898 was a founding member of the Berlin Secession, an association of the most modern artists of the time who no longer felt represented by the established art establishment.

As was so often the case with Impressionist painters, an extended stay in France radically influenced his conception of art. Hagemeister's eyes were opened, as he later wrote in a self-biography, in Paris, which he visited in the winter of 1883/84 at the invitation of his friend Carl Schuch. Whereas in the years before he had worked a lot with his Viennese friend in the spirit of Leibl's realism, he was now fascinated by movement, change and light: "I realised that it was not tonality that was the main thing for the pictures, but light, which changes eternally." (quoted by H. Warmt from the expert opinion on the present painting).

From then on, he withdrew to his homeland and portrayed the untouched nature there in all its facets and different moods. Hendrikje Warmt places the Water Lilies shown here, painted around 1902, in a larger context with other works that show the blossoms in an atmospheric density on the still water in a wide variety of lighting conditions: "A clear pictorial surface characterises the Water Lilies work of 1902, for delicate shades of green and blue determine the entire picture surface. No background is discernible (.): the concentrated detail of the whole represents the abstract up- or close-up view of the artist. Already a pictorial composition led by Hagemeister that points in a pioneering way to Expressionism."