In 1909, when Lovis Corinth was fifty-one, he had painted his wife Charlotte and their two young children, as they were enjoying everything that Berlin had to offer the successful artist. He had worked hard, and by the end of 1911 had painted more than three hundred substantial works in oils.

He seized this moment during The Model’s Break in 1909 to capture a more informal and natural full-length portrait of her. This is a not uncommon ruse resulting in some fine paintings by others, and works well for Corinth. This was exhibited in the 1913 exhibition of the Berlin Secession.

He painted the occasional urban landscape of the city too, such as this wintry Ice Rink in the Berlin Tiergarten (1909), where Berliners are skating on one of the frozen lakes in the park’s zoo.

Corinth continued to explore Christ’s Passion in real terms, in his Christ Carrying the Cross (1909). Although this contains most of the usual elements seen in traditional depictions, his language is contemporary, almost secular. Two men, one of them apparently African, are helping Christ bear his exhausting load, while a couple of soldiers are whipping him on and threatening him with their spears. A third soldier is controlling the crowd at the upper left, and behind is a mounted soldier and one of the disciples.

Homeric Laughter (1909) is one of Corinth’s more complex paintings of classical myth. He provides a good clue as to its interpretation in the inscription, which rendered from the original into English reads:
unquenchable laughter arose among the blessed gods as they saw the craft of wise Hephaestus
together with the citation of Homer’s Odyssey book 8 line 326.

This refers to a section in which Odysseus is being entertained by King Alcinous, after meeting Nausicaä on the island of the Phaeacians. To cheer Odysseus up, the bard Demodocus tells a tale of the illicit love affair between Ares/Mars (god of war) and Aphrodite/Venus (goddess of love), that has featured extensively in art.

One day Hephaistos/Vulcan catches the couple making love in his marriage bed, and throws a fine but unbreakable net over them. Hephaistos then summons the other gods, who come and roar with laughter at the ensnared couple.

In this first version, Corinth shows Aphrodite recumbent on the bed, shielding her eyes from the crowd around her. Ares is struggling in frustration with the net securing the couple. Hephaistos, clad in black with his tools slung around his waist, is talking to Poseidon (wearing a crown) with Dionysos/Bacchus behind him (clutching a champagne glass). At the right edge is Hermes/Mercury, with his winged helmet. Sundry putti are playing with Ares’ armour, and an arc of them adorns the sky.

Corinth also painted a second version, which he etched in 1920 to make prints.

Morning Sun (1910) is a wonderfully painterly oil sketch of Charlotte enjoying the sunshine in bed.

Contrasting with that is this more formal Portrait of Charlotte Corinth in a Brown Blouse from 1910.

Earlier in his career, Corinth doesn’t appear to have painted many floral or other still lifes, but after 1900 he seems to have been more attracted to them. Roses (1910) strikes a perfect balance between botanical detail in their blooms, and looseness in the foliage and background.

Over these years, Corinth and his family travelled, here to a Terrace in Klobenstein, The Tirol (1910). Klobenstein or Collalbo is a mountain resort at an altitude of just over 1,000 metres in the South Tirol, in Italy. This painting shows the Hamburg businessman and art collector Henry B Simms (1861-1922) on holiday there during the summer. Simms was a keen collector of Corinth’s work, and later also became an early purchaser of Picasso’s works. The children shown are almost certainly his, and Corinth painted a more formal portrait of him in the same year.

Woman with a Fishtank (1911) shows Charlotte in their flat on Klopstockstraße in Berlin. The aquarium, full of goldfish, is surrounded by quite a jungle of indoor plants, her little corner of vegetation within their city flat. According to her later memoirs, Corinth took just four days to complete this painting.

Corinth’s celebration of his fifty-third birthday on 21st July was more restrained than his fiftieth, but he seems to have enjoyed painting a Large Still Life with Figure (1911), featuring Charlotte in a surprising outfit. They must have enjoyed quite a banquet afterwards, judging by the dead game on the table.

Carl Hagenbeck in his Zoo (1911) is one of his more unusual portraits, painted not of the splendid walrus, but of Carl Hagenbeck (1844-1913), a merchant of wild animals. Hagenbeck was the originator of the modern zoo with its ‘open’ and naturalistic enclosures, and established the most successful private zoo in Germany at Stellingen just outside Hamburg. He died a couple of years after this portrait, when he was bitten by one of his snakes.

At this time Corinth also seems to have done a good trade in more conventional portraits, such as this Portrait of Frau Kaumann (1911) in richly dappled light.

Then in December 1911, Corinth suffered a major stroke: his left side, both arm and leg, were paralysed. Corinth had painted his entire professional career with his left hand, and was only 53.

References

Wikipedia.

Lemoine S et al. (2008) Lovis Corinth, Musée d’Orsay & RMN. ISBN 978 2 711 85400 4. (In French.)
Czymmek G et al. (2010) German Impressionist Landscape Painting, Liebermann-Corinth-Slevogt, Arnoldsche. ISBN 978 3 89790 321 0.

Lovis Corinth’s art and career reached their peak once he had joined the Berlin Secession, and in the Spring of 1903 had married his former student Charlotte Berend. Although their early family and social life had reduced the number of paintings he produced, their quality remained consistently high, and he was living up to his reputation as ‘the painter of flesh’.

The Childhood of Zeus (1905-6) shows Zeus, senior god in the Greek pantheon, as a young boy at its centre. According to various myths, he was the son of the Titans Cronus and Rhea. Cronus swallowed his other children, so to save Zeus from the same fate, Rhea gave birth to him in Crete, and handed Cronus a rock disguised as a baby, which he promptly swallowed.

Rhea then hid Zeus in a cave, where he was raised by one or more of a long list of surrogates, including Gaia, a goat, a nymph, and others, several of which appear in this raucous painting. Corinth adds Dionysus to provide an abundant supply of nourishing grapes, and lend a little ironic humour.

In 1906, he took his wife Charlotte to his home village of Tapiau and the city of Königsberg where he had started his training and career, and the following year they travelled to Florence, where he copied frescos using pastels.

Following his earlier paintings of the Deposition, Corinth came even closer to harsh reality in The Great Martyrdom from 1907. He takes the example of an ordinary man being crucified, then secularises the image and places it in a vivid context, making clear the vicious inhumanity of crucifixion.

In The Capture of Samson (1907), Corinth revisited another of his favourite subjects, whom he had painted in 1893 in company with Delila, and again in 1899 in a related scene of his capture. Here, with some simple props including an eclectic and anachronistic range of headgear, he shows the chaotic brawl that resulted in Samson’s bondage. Corinth places himself as one of Samson’s captors in the left foreground, and Delila kneels, naked, at the top centre.

From 1907, he led formal teaching sessions in life classes in Berlin.

To celebrate his fiftieth birthday in 1908, Corinth painted several canvases, including Nakedness reflecting his fleshly reputation. This was completed over a few days at the end of March that year, and the following month was delivered to the Secession’s exhibition, where it was well received.

Bacchante Couple (1908) is another self-portrait with Charlotte, with the couple apparently enjoying their wild lifestyle at the time. This may have been another birthday celebration.

Female Half-Nude by a Window (1908) is one of the popular sub-genre of ‘woman at the window’ scenes, and a less roughly hewn nude shown in delicate lighting.

Corinth’s second painting of The Temptation of St Anthony after Gustave Flaubert from 1908, shown below, demonstrates how his style had changed over a period of just a decade, compared with his first painting (above) from 1897 when he was in Munich.

This second version is based on Flaubert’s account La Tentation de Saint-Antoine, and focusses on a scene in which the Queen of Sheba appears in the saint’s visions. Shown with her is a train consisting of an elephant, camels, and naked women riding piebald horses. This new Saint Anthony is far younger, and surrounded by this outlandish circus of people and animals. In his left hand he holds a heavy chain, and there’s a skull in his right hand.

According to later recollections of the artist’s son Thomas, Corinth painted this from professional models in his studio on Berlin’s Handelstraße. Charlotte modelled only for the arm and hand of the Queen of Sheba. Together with Nakedness, this must have been completed by the end of March 1908, and was shown at the Secession’s exhibition from April to June. It was also among Corinth’s works representing Germany at the thirteenth Venice Biennale in 1922, and was the basis for an etching he made in 1919.

Self-portrait, Painting shows the artist at work in 1909 when he was 51. He has signed his name using Greek letters, and on the right side has inscribed aetatis suae LI, meaning his age 51.

Another of his most popular paintings from this period is his group portrait of The Artist and his Family (1909). All dressed up for what may have been intended to be a more formal group portrait, Charlotte sits calmly cradling daughter Wilhelmine, then just five months old, as the artist seems to be struggling to paint them. Their son Thomas, aged five years, stands on a desk so he can rest his hand on mother’s shoulder. I suspect this was aided by a photograph.

References

Wikipedia.

Lemoine S et al. (2008) Lovis Corinth, Musée d’Orsay & RMN. ISBN 978 2 711 85400 4. (In French.)
Czymmek G et al. (2010) German Impressionist Landscape Painting, Liebermann-Corinth-Slevogt, Arnoldsche. ISBN 978 3 89790 321 0.

With his move to Berlin and the success of his painting of Salome, Lovis Corinth was reaching the peak of his career. Corinth formally joined the Berlin Secession in 1901, and quickly found himself involved with its direction. He relished his new-found reputation as ‘the painter of flesh’, and was now at the centre of Germany’s vibrant city of modern arts.

In 1902, he opened a painting school for women, and among his first pupils was Charlotte Berend (1880-1967), then just twenty-one and the daughter of a rich textile merchant.

The Family of the Painter Fritz Rumpf (1901) is a wonderfully informal family portrait, sadly omitting Fritz Rumpf (1856-1927) altogether, but Corinth painted him separately. The mother, at the right, is Margarethe née Gatterer, and all six of their children are included.

In the summer of 1902, Corinth painted Charlotte Berend for the first time, and the couple travelled to Pomerania together. That autumn they became engaged. By this time, Charlotte had already become Corinth’s muse and preferred model, as she was to remain for the rest of his life. That year, Corinth also visited Paris, Anvers, and the Netherlands.

Self portrait with Charlotte Berend-Corinth (1902) is his earliest double portrait with his fiancée. Its original title in German means self-portrait with his wife and a champagne glass although the glass that he’s holding clearly doesn’t contain champagne. This refers to Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait with Saskia (The Prodigal Son) (1636), below, in which Saskia is sat on Rembrandt’s lap, and he raises a large fluted glass of beer in his right hand. Charlotte, in the role of Saskia, looks quiet and calm, against Corinth/Rembrandt’s alcohol-fuelled mirth.

Swimming in Horst – Ostsee (1902) shows swimmers in the Baltic Sea at what was then known as Horst, and is now the Polish resort of Niechorze.

Presumably Paddling (1902) shows Charlotte’s turn to take to the waters there.

Charlotte Berend and Lovis Corinth married in the spring of 1903. He was 44, she was only 22. In the autumn of the following year, their first child, Thomas, was born, and in 1909 their daughter Wilhelmina.

Self-portrait with Model (1903) is the couple’s second joint portrait, and the first after their marriage. This time her pose refers to the classical images of muses by Rubens and Ingres, alluding to the story of Pygmalion.

Corinth appears to have painted with his left hand, so this image hasn’t been painted directly from a mirror, but he may well have used photographs instead.

Max Reinhardt moved to Berlin at the same time as Corinth, and in 1902 his Little Theatre staged what I think was the German premiere of Oscar Wilde’s play Salome. Richard Strauss saw the play there, and it inspired him to write his opera of the same name the following summer.

Corinth painted this wonderful portrait of its star and title role, Gertrud Eysoldt as Salome (1903). This makes an interesting contrast with his 1900 painting of the story. Although during this period he painted fewer mythical and other narrative works, the next painting is one of his most vivid stories.

Ulysses Fighting the Beggar (1903) shows a story from book 18 of Homer’s Odyssey, before the slaughter of the suitors (painted much earlier by Gustave Moreau, but never completed).

Odysseus/Ulysses has finally returned to his home city of Ithaca and is now determined to kill the many suitors to his wife Penelope. As he plans this, he goes around disguised as a beggar. This fragment of the elaborate story starts with the arrival of a real beggar named Arnaeus or Irus, who most unwisely picks a fight with Odysseus, who promptly floors the beggar, and stops just short of killing him.

Corinth captures the fight as Odysseus (centre) is getting the better of Irus (left of centre), with various suitors and bystanders watching. Although painted loosely, the artist has taken care to give each face its own expression, ranging from amusement to apprehension. The end result is a raucous collage of human emotion.

Corinth seems not to have taken this study of abduction, Frauenraub (1904), any further, and I don’t know its narrative context.

Landscapes are relatively infrequent over these years, but I could not resist including this delightful Blooming Farm Garden from 1904.

Corinth’s reputation as ‘the painter of flesh’ was maintained by two groups of nudes. The Harem (1904) uses an ever-popular ‘oriental’ setting for its abundance of female flesh, but has some distinctive touches too. The cat sat in the foreground ignores, in the way that only cats can, some sort of horseplay taking place behind, while a guard looks as bored as the cat. This isn’t the sumptuous silk and divan lounge shown in the nineteenth century, though. Indeed, it all looks rather tawdry.

In complete contrast, Charlotte Berend in a Deck Chair (1904) is a tender and intimate sketch of his wife relaxing away from their son, her wedding ring prominent on her left hand.

References

Wikipedia.

Lemoine S et al. (2008) Lovis Corinth, Musée d’Orsay & RMN. ISBN 978 2 711 85400 4. (In French.)
Czymmek G et al. (2010) German Impressionist Landscape Painting, Liebermann-Corinth-Slevogt, Arnoldsche. ISBN 978 3 89790 321 0.

Lovis Corinth didn’t just spend his years in Munich drinking red wine and champagne, but experimented in his painting and evolved his mature style. In 1897, he moved studio within Munich, and started making increasingly frequent visits to Berlin, where he was able to obtain lucrative commissions for portraits. Corinth was among the founding members of the Berlin Secession in 1898, and by 1900 was renting a studio in Berlin. In the autumn of 1901, he closed his studio in Munich and moved fully to Berlin.

He had no shortage of attractive young women, like Ellÿ (1898), to paint, but he pressed on with his campaign to improve his style and technique.

Reclining Nude (1899) is usually considered to mark the peak of Corinth’s nudes, and was painted during one of his visits to Berlin. Its brushwork is so painterly that it has sometimes been mistakenly supposed that it was made well into the twentieth century, but is now securely dated to the end of his time in Munich.

Morning (1900) shows another very modern nude in personal and intimate surroundings.

In Max Halbe’s Garden (1899) shows a group of friends in an informal setting, chatting as they eat fruit next to the washing line. Max Halbe (1865-1944) was a German playwright with a growing reputation at the time, and is seen to the right of centre, with his wife at the right.

Portrait of Mother Rosenhagen (1899) most probably shows the mother of one of Corinth’s friends in Munich.

In addition to single-person portraits, Corinth was commissioned to paint a few group portraits, including this of The Lodge Brothers from 1898-99. He modelled this after Rembrandt’s smaller group portraits, placing the Master of the Lodge in the centre, where his gaunt face stares up to the heavens.

In these last few years in Munich, Corinth worked on a series of two paintings exploring the story of Salome and John the Baptist’s execution. He seems to have started this work with a drawing in 1897, which eventually led to one of his greatest paintings.

The original narrative is biblical, and straightforward: the unnamed daughter of Herodias (subsequently identified as Salome) performed a dance at a birthday feast thrown by King Herod. The dance so pleased Herod that he offered her anything that she wanted, up to half his kingdom. She asked not for riches, but for the head of Saint John the Baptist, the earthly messenger sent to announce the birth and ministry of Jesus Christ. Herod reluctantly agreed, John was beheaded in prison, and his head brought to her on a plate, which the dancer gave to her mother.

A popular story for religious paintings, Corinth decided to paint a scene close to that most commonly chosen, in which John’s head has been brought to Salome on a platter. This contrasts with the choices made by Gustave Moreau almost twenty-five years earlier.

The basic cast and arrangement of figures is the same in each version: the severed head of John the Baptist is at the centre, Salome leaning over and touching it with her right hand. Behind her are two women. The receptacle containing John’s head is itself on the head of a slave, who kneels at the feet of the executioner, who stands holding the bloodied sword in his right hand, facing Salome. To the lower right, three other figures are partly cropped out: the feet of John’s dead body, and another slave bent over them to look at the head of an older man.

Corinth’s first painting of Salome from 1899 shows the dancer dressed as a tart, her breasts hanging loose, her face sneering down at John’s face with contempt as she touches it. The young woman at the top right laughs as she looks towards the left, apparently detached from the gruesome scene in front of her. No gazes meet, thus the figures do not integrate into a whole.

His second Salome from the following year is less roughly worked and more finished to show finer detail. Although its figures haven’t moved, subtle changes have transformed the painting and its reading.

Salome has a more neutral facial expression, and is staring intently at the lower abdomen of the executioner. Her right hand is stretching open the left eye of John’s head, which appears to be staring up at her. The executioner and the young woman at the top right are laughing at one another, but the third woman beside her has a serious, almost sad expression, as she stands holding a large peacock fan. Visible at the top of her clothing, directly below her chin, is the small image of a human skull.

Corinth has also added detail to the cropped figures at the lower right. John’s legs are spattered with his blood, and possibly bear wounds or sores from his imprisonment. The two figures there are engaged in eye-to-eye contact, and there is also a profusion of hands there, as the older man appears to be raising John’s right arm.

The chain of gaze here is central to the painting’s narrative: John’s eye stares at Salome, who stares at the executioner’s crotch, who laughs at the young woman at the top right, who laughs back at him. Watching sombre and detached from behind is the figure of death.

Oscar Wilde’s one-act play Salome had been first published in French in 1891, and was soon translated into English and German. Banned from public performance in Britain, it received its premier in Paris in 1896, but wasn’t performed in public in England until 1931. Wilde had been influenced by Gustave Moreau’s paintings of Salome, and in turn influenced both Corinth’s paintings and Richard Strauss’s later opera (1905).

In Salome’s words at the end of Wilde’s play (he calls John the Baptist Jokanaan):
But, wherefore dost thou not look at me Jokanaan? Thine eyes that were so terrible, so full of rage and scorn, are shut now. Wherefore are they shut? Open thine eyes! Lift up thine eyelids, Jokanaan! Wherefore dost thou not look at me? Art thou afraid of me, Jokanaan, that thou wilt not look at me?
If thou hadst looked at me thou hadst loved me. Well I know that thou wouldst have loved me, and the mystery of love is greater that the mystery of death.

At the centre of Wilde’s play is the perversion of lust and desire in Salome, captured so well by Corinth in the chain of gaze.

This second painting was rejected by the Munich Secession, but welcomed by the Berlin Secession. As a result, Corinth was dubbed ‘the painter of flesh’, establishing his reputation and securing his future in Berlin.

References

Wikipedia.

Lemoine S et al. (2008) Lovis Corinth, Musée d’Orsay & RMN. ISBN 978 2 711 85400 4. (In French.)
Czymmek G et al. (2010) German Impressionist Landscape Painting, Liebermann-Corinth-Slevogt, Arnoldsche. ISBN 978 3 89790 321 0.