About the work
A warm, sunny day in May: there are not yet any leaves on the trees, and the branches are bare, but the vernally vibrating air can already be felt. There is not a single cloud to be seen in the brilliant blue sky. The ideal weather for the elated wedding procession, headed by the brass band of the Fischerhude congregation, clad in black with top hats. Right behind them, the newlywed couple and the pretty bridesmaids with their long dresses in soft pastel shades, followed by the elegant wedding party, which is just leaving the decorated family home of the bride. At the left edge of the painting in front of the barn, three children approach, running to join the wedding procession.
Otto Modersohn’s subject enjoyed great popularity in the 1920s and still captures the attention of viewers today with its poetic power of expression. The artist lends peace and stability to the detailed motif with its many figures through the buildings projecting into the image from the right and left. It acquires a rhythm through the tall trees of the foreground, which define the image and line the path of the wedding procession. Typical for the work phase around 1926/27 are the transparent colourfulness and the animated brushwork, which lends the painting an internal vibration.
"Shortening this, adding the extract, speaking of nature in aphorisms", Otto Modersohn wrote in his diary in December 1925, "is eminently spiritual. One must deliver oneself entirely to one’s feelings, impulses, temperament. Only this creates enduring art.”
Text authored and provided by Dr. Doris Hansmann, Art historian
Studies of art history, theater, film and television, English and Romance Languages at the University of Cologne, doctorated in 1994. Research assistant at the Art Museum Düsseldorf. Lecturer and project manager at Wienand Verlag, Cologne. Freelance work as an author, editor and book producer for publishers and museums in Germany and abroad. From 2011 chief editor at Wienand Verlag, from 2019 to 2021 senior editor at DCV, Dr. Cantz’sche Verlagsgesellschaft, Berlin. Numerous publications on the art of the 20th and 21st centuries.
