Lyonel Feininger Yellow street 1908 Ink pen,... Lot 7

Lyonel Feininger Yellow street 1908 Ink pen, watercolor and charcoal on ivory handmade paper. 26,8 x 21 cm. Framed under glass. Signed and dated in ink upper left 'Feininger 08', titled lower center 'Gelbe Strasse'. Lower left inscribed in pencil "X L.F.". On the reverse with the oval estate stamp "Feininger Estate" (not in Lugt), inscribed in pencil by another hand "Gelbe Strasse" and "A 23". - In good, freshly colored condition. With narrow, very faint light margin. Achim Moeller, director of the Lyonel Feininger Project LLC, New York - Berlin, has confirmed the authenticity of this work, which is registered in the Lyonel Feininger Project archive under the number 1826-02-10-23. A certificate is enclosed with the work. Provenance Estate of Lyonel Feininger, New York; Marlborough Fine Art, London; Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne, 1994; Walter Brune Collection, Düsseldorf Exhibitions Cologne 1994 (Galerie Gmurzynska), Lyonel Feininger. Marine, Mellingen, Manhattan, p. 30 f., with color illustrations (on the back of the frame with the gallery label) The early ink pen drawing "Yellow Street" was created during one of Feininger's inspiring stays in Paris. Fascinated by the pulsating metropolis, by the partly medieval, partly modern architecture and not least by the extravagantly dressed ladies, the German-American painter created a wealth of drawings and sketches during his repeated study trips to Paris - often daily and with rapid frequency. The subject of the excellent sheet is the paved street opening onto a small square. In the foreground are - partly boldly cut - two elegant ladies in large hats, a man in an elegant frock coat and an older, stocky woman. The figures do not relate to each other in any way, but they do seek eye contact with the viewer, whom they look at either furtively or directly. As a contributor to various Berlin newspapers and the Chicago Sunday Times, Feininger mastered the caricatured, quick stroke and was a master at capturing his contemporaries with their idiosyncrasies and weaknesses. He uses three dilapidated, picturesque houses as a backdrop, the one on the right adorned with a conspicuous flag. The "Yellow Street" is a good example of how Feininger's interest in Paris was not in the main sights, such as Nôtre-Dame Cathedral or the Eiffel Tower, but in the anecdotal atmosphere of the big city in the Montmartre district or on the Rive-Gauche. His particular focus was on the diverse, mostly elegant microcosm of the city. Feininger also created comparable scenes of inner-city Weimar during these years. That the "Yellow Street" was created in Paris, however, is proven by the painting "Yellow Street II" (1918, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts), in which the flag can be clearly identified as a tricolor.