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Dimensions: 77 by 130cm., 30¼ by 51¼in.

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Provenance: Purchased circa 1905-1906 by the grandparents of the present owner; thence by decent

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Notes: The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Dr Ruth Stein.
Alexander Koester was one of the leading animal painters of the Munich School. His paintings of ducks proved enormously popular from the day he first exhibited the subject publicly in Berlin in 1899. The graceful birds fascinated him for over forty years. The depiction of the subtle effects of sunlight on the birds' feathers became a passionate challenge for Koester, as did conveying the ripples in the water, surrounding foliage and the play of shadows. An anonymous reviewer wrote of his work: 'the pleasure derived from these amusing web-footed birds can be explained by admiring the loose plumage, the orange beaks, the reflections in the water, the sunshine, the blueish reflexes in the air - a wealth of technical challenges'' (as quoted in Ruth Stein and Hans Koester, Alexander Koester, Germany, 1988, p. 47).

Koester painted the present work from an elevated viewpoint, eliminating most background scenery and leaving the viewer to conjecture as to whether the ducks are on the banks of a river, lake or pond. Koester's view has an incidental quality to it, albeit carefully contrived, capturing a fleeting moment as the sun catches the birds' feathers and reflects off the moving water behind them. Like an Impressionist picture, it represents a glimpse as it might be caught by the casual passer-by.

Indeed, Koester can be compared to the Impressionists in his interest in depicting the fleeting effects of light. However, despite the stylistic parallels with the work of the French Impressionists and other avant-garde artists at home, such as Liebermann, Corinth (lot 69) or Zügel (lot 65) who clearly exerted an influence on him, Koester's pictures also reveal a deep-felt love and respect for the birds he spent so much time painting. Whereas his contemporaries in France, for example, would have most likely reduced the birds to no more than dabs of paint, Koester, true to his academic training, endowed them with an endearing character and presence of their own.