작품 상세

Watercolour and gouache on paper, laid down on cardboard. (19)17. C. 47 x 40.5 cm. Monogrammed and dated lower right. Two men are sitting at a table in a beer garden. Deeply immersed in their card game, they disregard the observer: their attention is focused only on the cards on the table. The man on the left is holding his beer tankard with lid in his hand, the other, with a pointed beard and hat, seems to have just discarded the black playing card. The red and white chequered tablecloth is indicated by a few squares in one corner of the table. At first glance, we seem to be witnessing an everyday pub scene. But this is a work of Campendonk from 1917, and so there is something surreal about this scene: It is night, the crescent moon hovers over the roofs, strange plants, some of which look like ferns, spread out over the picture surface, in the lower right corner there is inexplicably a bucket with a fish. Campendonk's works contain a large number of recurring motifs that function as signposts through his pictorial world: Cow, cat, kerosene lamp, but also the fish and bucket are recurring pictorial elements that occur in combination with humans. In the process, the animals become attributes of the people depicted, but their meaning remains uncertain. Characteristic of the artist’s works created during the First World War is also a magical glow of the picture surface. The expressive colours of the Blaue Reiter painters that had influenced his work previously are now being replaced by a more subtle colouring. The artist increasingly works with light-dark contrasts, as here in the buildings with their black windows and white walls, which he enlivens with brightly lit colours, such as the red of the jacket and the roofs or the yellow of the bucket, the table and an indeterminable form on the left, which runs as a coloured diagonal through the composition of the picture. In this year, the artist increasingly began to monogram his works, thus marking them as independent, finished works. The present work is also monogrammed, thus showing the artist's satisfaction with his work. In the same year he painted an oil painting with the same title, today in the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld (Firmenich 682). Our work comes from the estate of Gustav Ferdinand Jung (1878-1943), a merchant and factory owner from Hagen with a pronounced artistic inclination. In 1904 Jung married Hildegard Walther, the sister of the sculptor Hans Walther. Through him Jung got in touch with the art world in Berlin. Around 1911 he met Kirchner there and spontaneously acquired his first pictures. Until 1924 Jung bought numerous works of classical modern art, including Kirchner, Heckel, Feininger and Campendonk, of which he acquired at least five works - documented by letter.