Details

Achim Moeller, director of the Lyonel Feininger Project LLC, New York – Berlin, has confirmed the authenticity of this work, which is registered in the archive of the Lyonel Feininger Project under the number 1320-03-11-15. With a photo expertise dated 11.3.2015. Literature:Deuchler, Florens, Lyonel Feininger. Sein Weg zum Bauhaus-Meister, Leipzig 1996, no. 32, p. 25, with black and white ill. Exhibitions: Feininger in Paris: Lyonel Feininger. Die Pariser Zeichnungen of 1892 bis 1911, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg 1992, cat. no.56, p. 98, with ill.119. Provenance: private collection, New York; Karl & Faber, 12.6.2015, lot 672; private collection, Munich.

Description

Following his first seven-month stay in Paris in 1892/93, Lyonel Feininger returned to the Seine in July 1906. This time he stayed for longer. Together with his future wife Julia and their son Andreas, who was born in December 1906, he lived in Paris until October 1908. He studied at the Colarossi studio and often visited the famous artists’ bar Café du Dôme on the Boulevard du Montparnasse, a meeting place for predominantly German students of Matisse such as Oskar Moll, Hans Purrmann and Rudolf Grossmann. Feininger may have sat here in April 1908 and recorded this animated conversation between three people over beer in his sketchbook.