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Sonnenblummen signed 'E L Kirchner' (lower centre), and signed again 'E L Kirchner' (on the reverse) oil on canvas 311/2 x 271/2 in. (80 x 70 cm.) Painted in 1909 and retouched in 1918 PROVENANCE Willem van Vloten, Malans, acquired directly from the artist circa 1918-1920 and thence by descent Anon. sale, Christie's London, 3 April 1989, lot 36. Galerie Thomas, Munich, from whom purchased by the father of the present owners. LITERATURE Kirchner Archive, photograph, volume I, no. 47, dated 1904. D. E Gordon, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Cambridge, 1968, no. 73 (illustrated p. 276). EXHIBITION Munich, Galerie Thomas, 25 Jajre danach, February-April 1990, no. 62. NOTES By 1909, Kirchner was painting in a style distinctly his own and one which was inspired by the radical new painting techniques of his Br쳌cke partners, Heckel, Schmidt-Rottluff, and Pechstein. Gone were the tentative experiments with French divisionism, reworkings of Van Gogh or the influence of the Fauves: the "new painting" was fluid, colourist, raw and individualistically self-confident. As they painted together in Dresden and began to show together at Kunstsalon Richter, the confidence of the young Br쳌cke painters grew rapidly and the strength of the new brotherhood began to shine through in their paintings. Sonnenblummen is an exuberant statement painting: full of raw power and full of the positive energy of a young artist who had quickly become the spokesperson for the Br쳌cke movement. The vigour of Sonnenblummen seems to express in paint Kirchner's words in the Br쳌cke group's official manifesto of 1906: "With a belief in progress and in a new generation of creators and supporters we summon all youth together. As youth we carry the future and want to create for ourselves freedom of life and movement in opposition to the well-established older forces. Everybody belongs to our cause who reproduces directly and passionately whatever urges him to create" (quoted in B. Herbert, German Expressionism - Die Br쳌cke and Der Blaue Reiter, London, 1983, p. 34.). In the same way as many Fauve painters pre-dated their works in order to appear the most avant-garde of their contemporaries, Kirchner in his handlists dated Sonnenblummen as a work executed in 1904. We know that this is not the case. Gordon dates the work from 1909, although he had apparently not seen the painting. Dr. Wolfgang Henze, in turn, has suggested in 1989 that the painting may well have been retouched in some areas by Kirchner when Erna sent it to him in Davos in 1918. Thereafter, the work was sold to Willem van Vloten of Malans between 1918 and 1920 in whose family collection it remained until its sale at Christie's, London, in 1989. Prior to this the painting had been presumably lost.