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Around 1911/13. Oil on canvas. 80 x 96,5cm. Signed bottom right: O. Schlemmer. Framed.

Provenance:
Collection Senator Beindorff (Proprietor Pelikan-Works), Hanover
Collection Bruno Steinhorst (Executive employee Pelikan-Works), Hanover
Since early 1910s in family possession

Literature:
Cf. Karin von Maur, Oskar Schlemmer - Volume I: Monographie, Volume II: Oeuvrekatalog der
Gemälde, Aquarelle, Pastelle und Plastiken, Munich 1979, Cat.-rais. No. G 43, G 47, G 52, G 61 and A 17 with ill.

This work by Oskar Schlemmer which has been in family possession for about 100 years belongs to one of the so far unknown and unpublished works of the artist. The work can be dated and attributed due to reference works documented in Karin von Maur's catalogue raisonné. In the years 1911 to 1913 there are four paintings and one drawing which use the motif of the white house resp. the nursery by the Stuttgarter Pragfriedhof. The version presented here is the largest so far known. Senator Beindorff (with Günter Wagner joint-proprietor of the Pelikan Works) might have given the painting to Bruno Steinhorst as a present. Until World War I Steinhorst was the Pelikan Works' representative for entire Asia and consequently occupied an important position. Moreover, the two families have been on cordial terms up to the present. Schlemmer's involvement with Pelikan is documented by a competition in spring 1911. Günter Wagner had hosted the competition to put the Pelikan artists' colours to a practical test and also to set up a collection of works which were created with colours produced by Pelikan. The jury consisted of renowned painters such as Max Liebermann and Leopold Graf von Kalckreuth, as well as the Hanover museum directors Gustav Pauli and Wilhelm Behnke. Schlemmer was bestowed one of the ten prizes - though which one is still unknown.
In terms of his painting style there is a clear relation to Cézanne. Schlemmer's "occupation with the painter from Southern France is above all evident in some of his landscapes from the years 1910 to 1912, most noticeably in the 'Landschaft mit weißem Haus' in its four different versions (G 43, 47, 52, 61). Even though it is not possible to say for certain which of the four versions was created first the painting from 1911 (G 43) shows the knowledge of the typical visual means of the master from Aix en Provence that is the Passage technique, the merging of fore- and background (...). Although his occuptaion with Cézanne was a neccessary phase he passed through in order to adopt early Cubism shortly afterwards and traces of that phase can be noticed in a series of later paintings, this technique appeared to have worked rather against the Swabians tendency to order and simplification when we consider his own statement on it. A comment in his diary from 27. April 1915 reads: 'My earlier nursery house landscapes. Cézanne held me off, my inner feeling: to condense, not to yield'" (translated and quoted after Karin von Maur, Munich 1979, Vol. I, p. 40).