Galtviehweide

When Ernst Ludwig Kirchner first arrived in the small town of Davos in the Swiss Alps during the opening weeks of 1917, he was a shell of his former self. Suffering from a severe nervous breakdown and general ill-health following his military service in the First World War, he had been sent to the resort town by his doctors to convalesce, in the hope that the clear mountain air and tranquility of the Swiss countryside would allow the artist to recover his sanity in peace. Though the artist was initially shocked by the cold weather, the move would ultimately prove revelatory for Kirchner, not only providing him with a mental clarity that allowed him to emerge from his deep depression and return to his painting once again, but also opening his eyes to an entire spectrum of new subjects. It was here, surrounded by the serenity of the majestic Alpine landscapes, that Kirchner entered one of the most productive phases of his artistic career, painting an array of richly coloured canvases which strove to capture the peaceful rhythms of life in the mountains and the grandeur of the scenery surrounding him.

In a letter to his friend Nele van de Velde composed shortly after his arrival, Kirchner described the ways in which Alpine life had exerted its power over him, and left its mark on his paintings: ‘I longed so much to create works from pure imagination, the kind one sees in dreams, but the impression of reality is so rich here that it consumes all my strength’ (letter to Nele van de Velde, October 13, 1918, cited in D. Gordon, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1968, p. 114). His visions of the majestic landscapes focused not on any views that would have graced tourist postcards, but rather were rooted in his direct experience of the environment and way of life in the high-lying villages of the mountainside. In the autumn of 1918, Kirchner had moved to a petite Alpine cottage on the Stafelalp above Frauenkirch, which he called ‘In den Lärchen,’ where he spent his days surrounded by local farmers tending to their livestock on the mountain pastures. As a result, the life of the farming community, governed by the natural cycle of the seasons, became a principal subject of his art, their diligent toiling on the unforgiving lands of the mountainside and stoic acceptance of the harsh weather conditions inspiring Kirchner’s imagination.

In Galtviehweide the artist focuses on the lone figure of a cowherd as he tends to his small herd of cattle, keeping watch as the animals wander along the steep inclines of a grassy peak. Captured in tones of vibrant yellow and purple, the animals appear nonchalant as they navigate the terrain, their varying poses revealing Kirchner’s familiarity with their movements and mannerisms, garnered from weeks of close observation. A small stream wraps around the central massif, drawing the eye outwards and into the dramatic scenery of the mountains. In contrast to the narrow perspective of the seascapes of Fehmarn executed during the artist’s Die Brücke period, the views captured from the Stafelalp focus on panoramic vistas, which celebrate the scale and monumentality of the majestic mountainscapes.

As with many of Kirchner’s early paintings from his time in Switzerland, Galtviehweide revels in unexpected, richly expressive colour contrasts, as the sharp peaks are rendered in varying shades of bright pink and purple, their exaggerated, jagged profiles captured using rapid, energetic brushwork. Indeed, it was the intensity of the light and colour within the Alpine landscape that appears to have captivated Kirchner most during these years: ‘the colours are wonderful, like old dark red velvet,’ he wrote in 1918. ‘Down below in the valley the cabins stand out in the boldest Paris blue against the yellow fields. For the first time here one really gets to know the worth of individual colours. And, in the bargain, the stark monumentality of the rows of mountains’ (quoted in ibid., p. 107).

Galtviehweide was formerly in the collection of the esteemed art historian, curator and museum director Wilhelm Valentiner, a highly influential figure in the American art scene between the wars, who led several important institutions over the course of his long career, including the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. An expert in the art of Rembrandt, Valentiner had moved to New York in 1908 to take up the newly created position of curator of Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and later founded the journal Art in America in 1913. Returning to his homeland during the First World War, he became involved in the country’s modern art scene, joining the Novembergruppe following the conflict and meeting artists such as Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Erich Heckel and Georg Kolbe.

Following his return to America, Valentiner began working as an art consultant to private collectors, museums and galleries, and organised the first major exhibition of German Expressionist art in United States, ‘Modern German Art,’ at the Anderson Galleries in 1923, which featured over 270 works by thirty different artists. Though the exhibition drew scornful reviews from the press, Valentiner continued to champion German modernism in America, organising several important exhibitions, advocating for museums to acquire works by contemporary German artists, and purchasing artworks for his own private collection in an effort to ‘lead by example.’ Galtviehweide subsequently passed to Valentiner’s colleague and friend, James B. Byrnes, the first curator of modern art at LACMA and associate director of the North Carolina Museum of Art during Valentiner’s time at the institution, who assumed responsibility for the organisation after Valentiner’s death in 1958.