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Lot Essay
Painted in 1908, Stilleben mit Tasse dates from a crucial period in Jawlensky's career when he had begun to develop the expressive influence and understanding of colour for which he would become famous. In this painting, this love of pure and untrammelled colour is clear in the red abstracted form in the lower right, which appears as a tabletop, upon which a sumptuous bowl of apples and a glowing, almost burning, white cup are situated. This technique lends the fruit and other objects an intensity that is akin to stained glass. Jawlensky's increasing interest in colour, to which he was to become almost spiritually attached in his pictures, owed itself to two other artists during this period: the Nabi painter Paul Sérusier and the arch-colourist Henri Matisse. Both of these he had met around the time that Stilleben mit Tasse was painted, yet the incandescent palette with which areas of this work are filled clearly owes a great part of its vitality to Matisse, while the increasing sense of a poetic and spiritual power translated through colour owes much to the theories of the Nabis. This was a facet of Jawlensky's painting that would become formalised around the time when this picture was painted, when he began holidaying in Murnau with his fellow Russian, Wassily Kandinsky.
The painting was first gifted by Jawlensky to his fellow artist and close friend Lisa Kümmel. Jawlensky wrote in his memoirs: ‘In 1927 I met Lisa Kümmel, an artist who has since then been a very good friend of mine and has helped me to put my work in order. She also understands my art very well, from the earliest works up to my latest paintings, and likes it very much.’ (quoted in C. Weiler, Jawlensky, Heads, Faces, Meditations, London, 1971, p. 103). It was inherited by her son Karl Kümmel and was later owned by another important person in Jawlensky’s life, Hanna Bekker vom Rath, who together with Kümmel were referred to as among his “emergency helpers”. The intimate connection between the first owners of the picture and the artist, alongside their insight into his oeuvre, are indicative of the quality of the work. A bold and radiant picture at the forefront of the avant garde of the time, which challenges the notions of traditional still life painting, and at the same time possess a delicate sense of pictorial poetry.
The painting was first gifted by Jawlensky to his fellow artist and close friend Lisa Kümmel. Jawlensky wrote in his memoirs: ‘In 1927 I met Lisa Kümmel, an artist who has since then been a very good friend of mine and has helped me to put my work in order. She also understands my art very well, from the earliest works up to my latest paintings, and likes it very much.’ (quoted in C. Weiler, Jawlensky, Heads, Faces, Meditations, London, 1971, p. 103). It was inherited by her son Karl Kümmel and was later owned by another important person in Jawlensky’s life, Hanna Bekker vom Rath, who together with Kümmel were referred to as among his “emergency helpers”. The intimate connection between the first owners of the picture and the artist, alongside their insight into his oeuvre, are indicative of the quality of the work. A bold and radiant picture at the forefront of the avant garde of the time, which challenges the notions of traditional still life painting, and at the same time possess a delicate sense of pictorial poetry.