CORINTH, Lovis Lovis Corinth Tapiau (East Prussia)... Lot 22

CORINTH, Lovis Lovis Corinth Tapiau (East Prussia) 1858 - 1925 Zandvoort (Netherlands) Mädchenkopf im Kissen 1898 Oil on canvas. 44.5 x 55 cm. Signed upper centre: LOVIS CORINTH. Provenance A. Weeber, Munich; Graphisches Kabinett, Bremen; Anonymous sale, Villa Grisebach, Berlin, 24 November 1989, lot 12; Anonymous sale, Christie's, London, German and Austrian Art, 9 October 1997, lot 132. Exhibitions Lovis Corinth. Ausstellung von Gemälden und Aquarellen zu seinem Gedächtnis, Berlin, Nationalgalerie, 30 January - 30 April 1926, no. 57. Literature Charlotte Berend-Corinth: Lovis Corinth. Die Gemälde. Werkverzeichnis, Munich 1992, p. 77, no. 158, reproduced p. 383. This unconventional, charming likeness of a girl comes from the Munich period of Lovis Corinth's œuvre. The same young, dark-haired model can also be seen in two small likenesses created in the same year: once as a full-length figure standing in front of a dishevelled bed in Das traurige Mädchen (Berend-Corinth 155), whose mournful gesture of covering her face only serves as a pretext for largely revealing her nude body, and once as Das lustige Mädchen (Berend-Corinth 157), which shows her laughing and only scantily covered by a sheet. Nestled between the pillow and blanket, the girl smiles directly at the viewer with an unaffected cheerfulness in the painting offered here. Only her head, with its curly shock of hair and the lace bonnet tied beneath her chin, and the fingers of her left hand are visible; the rest of her body remains hidden under the voluminous covers. The intimacy of the situation is further underscored through the narrowly cropped view and the horizontal oval of the painted