Provenance:
Swiss Private Property.

Expertise:
Signed photo certificate of authenticity by Julia Pechstein, 12 September 2023.
The watercolour is listed in the documentation of the Max Pechstein Urheberrechtsgemeinschaft to the work by Max Pechstein under the title "Rotes Haus am Haff", 1919.

According to the artist's granddaughter Julia Pechstein, this watercolour is part of a series of works, which were all created during a summer stay in Nidden on the Curonian Spit in 1919. The view goes out to the lagoon. In a letter to his friend, the art historian Paul Fechter dated 2 October 1919, Max Pechstein describes his feelings about this stay, his first trip after the First World War:
"... wahrlich ja, man könnte meinen ich sei gestorben, bin es wohl auch, erstorben in Farben, Leinwänden, Bildern. Alles ersäuft bei mir in Farben. Mein Gehirn ist nur mit Bildern gefüllt und jagd mich die Idee des zu malenden von einem Ort zum anderen. Noch nie erlebte solche Zeit, eine Wiedergeburt!".¹

“... Truly, yes, one might think that I have died, and I probably am, dead in colours, canvases, works of art. Everything is drowning in colour for me. My brain is filled with works of art only and the idea of what to paint chases me from one place to another. Never have I experienced such a time before, a rebirth!"

We would like to thank Julia Pechstein for her kind support with the cataloguing.

¹Max Pechstein, quoted in: Max Pechstein. Baltic Sea Pictures, Paintings - Drawings - Photographs. Ostdeutsche Galerie Regensburg, 9.7. - 31.8.1981. Regensburg 1981, page 37.