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PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION, LONDON
Lot 107
ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER(1880-1938)Fränzi in der Hängematte (mit Heckel links im Hintergrund)
17 October 2025, 14:00 BST
London, New Bond StreetSold for £5,120 inc. premium
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Adelaide Dunn
Associate Specialist, Head of Sale
ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER (1880-1938)
Fränzi in der Hängematte (mit Heckel links im Hintergrund)
charcoal on paper
15.7 x 20.6cm (6 3/16 x 8 1/8in).
Executed in 1910
charcoal on paper
15.7 x 20.6cm (6 3/16 x 8 1/8in).
Executed in 1910
Footnotes
This work is registered in the Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Archives, Wichtrach/Bern.
Provenance
Theo Hill Collection, Germany.
Anon. sale, Galerie Wolfgang Ketterer, Munich, 28 November 1988, lot 732.
Private collection, Munich.
Leinster Contemporary Art, London.
Private collection, London (acquired from the above on 1 April 1990).
Private collection, London (a gift from the above).
Executed in bold, gestural lines, this intimate charcoal sketch by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner captures two pivotal figures in the artist's inner circle at a formative moment in the development of German Expressionism. In the left of the background stands the artist Erich Heckel — Kirchner's close friend and fellow founding member of Die Brücke ('The Bridge'), the revolutionary group that the two helped establish in Dresden in 1905. United by a desire to forge a new visual language that would serve as a "bridge" to the art of the future, the artists of Die Brücke rejected academic convention in favour of raw, immediate expression. In the foreground, sitting upright upon a hammock, is Lina Franziska Fehrmann — known as Fränzi — an adolescent model who became a central muse for the group after meeting Kirchner in 1910, the year of the present sketch. Fränzi and her siblings frequently posed for Kirchner and his peers, their unidealised forms emblematic of Die Brücke's pursuit of emotional authenticity and spiritual primitivism. With its assertive outlines and rhythmic energy, the present work embodies Kirchner's search for a direct, unfiltered mode of seeing — an ethos that would come to define Die Brücke's radical contribution to twentieth-century art.