About the work

In 1923, in the year of origin of this watercolour, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner had already lived in Switzerland for several years. Following longer stays in Davos, he initially moved to the house “In den Lärchen” in Frauenkirch before withdrawing to the “Wildbodenhaus” at the entrance to the Sertig Valley on the other side of the valley across from his former place of residence in autumn of this year. “Our new little house is a true joy for us. We will dwell well and very tidily there. This should really turn out to be a turning point in my life. Everything must be brought into a clear and orderly structure, and the little house be furnished as simply and modestly as possible, but pretty and intimate.”

He lived in the small farmhouse with his life companion Erna Schilling amidst furniture he had designed and carved himself, inspired by African models and Swiss folk art. He had created the red pine wood bench with a carved female nude and two smaller figures of children shown in the watercolour shortly before.

Kirchner brings the convivial, colourful scene to paper with a quick stroke and a dynamically animated underdrawing. It shows the couple – the artist presumably portrayed himself to the left in the painting – with a visitor in the blue suit whose back is turned to the viewer. Everything in this painting harkens to the flat area, which can be quite impressively comprehended in the round table that tilts upward into the picture plane.

Works on paper like this exceptional sheet have a prominent place in the oeuvre of the artist. They function as interfaces between the genres and served not seldom as inspiration and a field for artistic experimentation. They are in no way inferior to the painting and are coequal works with their own artistic substance. “Creation”, as the artist wrote in his diary in 1927, “[is] like a tight, organic fabric, in which approach and completion walk next to one another almost every day, the one impelling the other.”