Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956) - photo 1

Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956)

Lot 6
15.12.2023 11:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Starting price
£ 100
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 1108805
Lot 6 | Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956)
Estimate value
£ 15 000 – 25 000
Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956)
Series of 15 letters, of which two autograph and the remainder typed letters, all but three signed ('Leo', 'Larry'), to 'Fritz', Falls Village, CT, New Haven, CT, New York City, and Stockbridge, MA, 24 August 1939, 9 July 1953 - 18 December 1955
In English with a few passages in German. Together 8 pages, autograph and 29 pages, typescript, two of the typed letters incomplete (one lacking opening, one lacking conclusion), the two incomplete letters with coloured woodcut illustrations; with two inscribed cards. Provenance: Sotheby's New York, 14 March 1986, lot 458.

'I devote much time, also during painting ... to old recollections': letters to an old friend, ranging back in time to memories of his childhood in Connecticut, of the songs of Berlin in the 1890s, of old friends, their shared love of railways and bicycles, of New York in the 1870s ('the matchless view from the long bridges spanning Fourth Avenue over the tracks'). Feininger also writes of his current enjoyment of the landscape of New England, taking snapshots from the car on the old 'horse-and-buggy' by-ways, 'where the ... road winds in and out, and up and down, and there is pure delight in looking across the Connecticut valleys with the scattered homesteads lying in favored nooks, and the hills in many rows in the distance tinted with the blue of the real old-style Currier and Ives shade'. Elsewhere he goes further into his taste in landscape: 'I love a treeless landscape ... I love cliffs on a sea shore ... I should love to visit Scotland and the Orkneys and all those terrific Motifs for paintings which I have to invent myself. I am intrigued by the white spots in maps, where nothing is recorded ...'. But the mood is predominantly retrospective, with his mind going back to 'Winter mornings in old Berlin, when a yellowish fog lay over the scene, snow lay everywhere on the streets and roofs, from whence it gleamed through the dark air'. Amongst other subjects, Feininger's interest in photography is mentioned ('Besides or rather, in addition to, my work at watercolors all Summer, I have doing much color-photography, and find it fascinating for "close-up" shots'), and there is some news of renewed appreciation in Germany, including letters from 'young Germans of the Post-Hitler generation, expressing much liking for old works of mine which have escaped destruction in the Nazi regime', and the prospect of a one-man show in Munich, Hanover and Amsterdam. He is however exercised by the fate of 'hundreds of books' and '50 of my earlier paintings' which were left behind when he fled Germany in 1936, and are now with a friend in East Germany and impossible to extract.

Feininger was born in New York City, but moved to Germany in 1887 at the age of 16 to study, and made his home in Berlin until forced to flee in 1936 by the Nazi regime, who classified his work as 'degenerate art'. He spent the rest of his life in the US.



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