T. Lux Feininger Lot n° 40

T. Lux Feininger Die auslaufende Flotte - The Outward Bound Fleet 1932 Oil on canvas. 45 x 85 cm. Framed. Bottom left signed in white 'LUX'. On the stretcher inscribed by another hand "Th. Lux: Outward Bound". - In good, freshly colored condition. Few minimal marginal retouchings. Schäfer/Witteveen catalog raisonné, Kunst-Archive.net; Luckhardt 58 Provenance Carnegie Art Museum, Pittsburgh (1933); acquired by the previous owner there, family owned for three generations USA Exhibitions Pittsburgh 1933 (Carnegie Art Museum), Thirty-First Carnegie International Exhibition of Paintings (Price list of paintings No. 344 - sold); Toledo/Ohio 1934 (Museum of Art), European Section of the Thirty-First Carnegie Int. Exhibition of Paintings Literature Paul Reißert, Ein Maler des Meeres, in: Deutsche Arbeit, 35th year, issue 5, May 1935, as a gravure supplement; Theodor Lux Feininger, Zwei Welten. Mein Künstlerleben zwischen Bauhaus und Amerika, Halle/Saale 2011, p. 119. This view of mighty sailing ships under full sail reveals the passion with which the passionate ship painter T. Lux Feininger devoted himself to his subjects. In extreme landscape format, he created a panorama that reflects the vastness of the sea and impressively brings out the spatial depth of the staggered ship formation. With the magnificent tall ships, he paid tribute to a bygone era of seafaring, the last representatives of which he was still able to see sporadically in the early 1930s. In his memoirs, he described a stay in Quimper, Brittany, in 1931: "I saw with my own eyes some of the last merchant square-rigged sailing ships in service, Breton-style marsail schooners, up to three of which we saw on the quay at Douarnenez, where they were unloading lumber. It was amazing how many sailors (cutters and luggers) were still around." (quoted in T. Lux Feininger, Two Worlds, op. cit., p. 116). This work, created in Pomeranian Deep in 1932, possessed a special significance for the artist, because it led to his first success there even before he moved to the United States. "I painted until the last minute of our stay, and one of the paintings of this period, Outward Bound Fleet, proved to be the ticket to the 1932 Carnegie International Exhibition." (op. cit., p. 119). Ultimately, it was not shown in 1932, but the following year at the Carnegie International and hung prominently next to paintings by Hermann Max Pechstein, Georg Schrimpf, and Erich Heckel, among others.