max beckmann - Galerie Thomas

MAX BECKMANN
THREE WATERCOLOURS
GALERIE THOMAS
Three Watercolours from the Stephan Lackner Collection
The Galerie Thomas proudly presents three outstanding watercolours by Max Beckmann.
They belonged to a man who knew Beckmann as did no other: Stephan Lackner.
The writer Stephan Lackner was not only one of Beckmann’s closest friends, but also a great patron and
collector of his works. His personal memoirs and the
numerous texts which Lackner wrote about Beckmann
attest to his intimate knowledge of the man; and until his
death in Santa Barbara, California, Lackner possessed
one of the largest collections of works by Beckmann in
the world.
Max Beckmann and Stephan Lackner were lifelong
friends. This is borne out by the watercolour Quappi
im Strandcafé (Quappi at the Beach Café), a deeply
personal work which Beckmann gave Lackner on his
twenty-fifth birthday. Lackner later recalled how on
21 April 1935:
“... Mr and Mrs Beckmann had invited me to tea when
suddenly Beckmann pulled a large portfolio out of a drawer. ‘So, choose a watercolour for yourself,’ he said, and
turning to his wife added: ‘I think the young man’s earned
it.’ After some hesitation, I chose a portrait of his wife
Quappi sitting at a restaurant table with oysters and red
wine, with a view of the North Sea, dunes and parasol.
A wonderfully worldly picture.”1 Beckmann even wrote a
dedication for him: ‘Quappi for Mr Gast Berlin 21.4.35
by Beckmann’.
Since 1933, Lackner had been publishing under his
mother’s maiden name Gast.
The watercolour captures a very private scene. It
shows Beckmann’s second wife Mathilde Kaulbach – nicknamed ”Quappi” – sitting in a beach café in Zandvoort
in 1934. The couple had been spending their holidays
at the Dutch seaside resort ever since the early thirties.
The sea had a special significance for Beckmann.
Except between 1916 and 1924, he managed to
spend a few weeks of every year at the seaside and
the works he produced there, including the Strandszene
mit Sonnenschirmen (Women on the Beach under Umbrellas) which was also painted at Zandvoort, evince a
lightness of touch that is rarely found elsewhere in his
work. Beckmann captures the shimmering sunlight of
a day at the seaside and invests the scene with such
vitality that the viewer can almost hear the shouts of the
children frolicking in the waves. Especially remarkable
in this composition is the railing in the foreground
alerting us to the viewer’s role as onlooker. It was a
stance which invariably fascinated Beckmann, who both
as an artist and as a man regarded himself as an outsider, as one on the fringes of society who rarely
became personally involved.
Cafés and city life generally afforded Beckmann with
plenty of opportunities for people-watching. He was
especially fond of cosmopolitan hotels and coffee
houses, which to his mind were like stage sets. The
impressively rich, dark palette of the densely composed
watercolour Zwei Damen im Café (Two Ladies in a
Café) conveys the urbane atmosphere of just
such a café. The scene is open to a range of interpretations – and it is precisely this ambivalence that
makes Beckmann such a magical storyteller.
“I still take pleasure in recalling those few days we spent in Paris,” wrote Max Beckmann to his
friend Stephan Lackner. “At times there was a harmony of feeling which otherwise is not so common
– that is at least something.”2 Penned in Amsterdam in 1938 and signed ‘Ever yours Beckmann’,
the lines are redolent of the artist’s dry humour. The letter is just one of the many documents that tell
us of the lively exchanges and the close friendship that existed between Lackner and Beckmann.
1
Stephan Lackner, Ich erinnere mich gut an Max Beckmann, Florian Kupferberg Verlag, Mainz 1967, p. 10
©Galerie Thomas | VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn | 2011
2
Ibid. p. 40
Women on the Beach
under Umbrellas
Two Ladies
in a Café
Portrait of Quappi
in a Beach Café
1936, 25 1/2 x 19 3/4 in.
signed and dated lower right
Beckmann/Gohr/Hollein 87
1933, 28 x 24 3/8 in.
signed and dated lower right
Beckmann/Gohr/Hollein 64
c. 1934/35, 25 5/8 x 19 1/4 in.
dedicated lower right
Beckmann/Gohr/Hollein 78
Stephan Lackner was born Ernst Morgenroth in Paris in 1910. His father was a Jewish merchant and his mother Lucie, née
Gast, a Protestant. At the outbreak of the First World War, the family moved to Germany, where on leaving school Ernst studied philosophy and art history in Frankfurt am Main. He was awarded his doctorate there in 1933 – the year his parents
returned to Paris. As a contributor to the ‘Frankfurter Zeitung’ and the ‘Kölnische Zeitung’, Ernst adopted his mother’s maiden
name and began calling himself Ernst Gast before switching to the nom de plume Stephan Lackner in 1935.
Lackner was just eighteen years old when he purchased his first work – a lithograph – by Beckmann; the first painting Mann
und Frau (Man and Woman) followed in 1933. Reflecting on that purchase, Beckmann recalled: “I was very glad to find
a young man with the courage and energy to understand emotions.” It was a special moment for both men and marked
the beginning of a long friendship which lasted until Beckmann’s death in 1950 – and beyond. Both shared the fate of the
émigré. On arriving in America, Lackner worked indefatigably to spread Beckmann’s fame just as he had done in Europe
and in 1947 paved the way for him to leave his exile in Amsterdam and emigrate to the USA.
In 1938, Lackner signed a contract with Beckmann in which he agreed to support him by buying two pictures a month in
exchange for a fixed sum of money. It was a commitment which was not always easy to honour and which frequently
necessitated self-denial in other areas.
The Selbstbildnis mit Horn (Self-Portrait with Horn) which Ronald Lauder bought in 2001 for his Neue Galerie in New York,
paying the record price of 22.6 million dollars, originally belonged to Lackner. On his death, Lackner’s family bequeathed
all his writings to the Max Beckmann Archive in Munich.
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GALERIE THOMAS