Live Auction 20651Impressionist and Modern Art Day and Works on Paper Sale
OTTO MUELLER (1874-1930)
Lot 454 PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT PRIVATE COLLECTION

OTTO MUELLER (1874-1930)

Flussufer mit blauem Baum (recto); Aktstudie (verso)

Closed4 March 2022

Estimate

GBP 40,000–60,000

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OTTO MUELLER (1874-1930)
Flussufer mit blauem Baum (recto); Aktstudie (verso)
stamped with Nachlass stamp (Lugt 1829d, on the reverse)
gouache, watercolour and pastel on paper (recto); sanguine on paper (verso)
27 x 20 3⁄8 in. (68.8 x 51.7 cm.)
Executed circa 1924 (recto)

The artist's estate and thence by descent in 1931.
Anonymous sale, Galerie Wolfgang Ketterer, Munich, 9 June 1970, lot 1101.
Anonymous sale, Galerie Kornfeld, Bern, 26 June 1981, lot 564.
Galerie Wilhelm Grosshennig, Dusseldorf, by 1981.
Wolfgang Wittrock Kunsthandel, Dusseldorf, by 1987.
Private collection, Germany, by whom acquired from the above in 1988, and thence by descent; sale, Sotheby's, London, 27 February 2019, lot 227.
Acquired from the above sale by the present owner.

Specialist note

When the painters of Die Brücke met Otto Mueller in 1910, they immediately saw him as a “natural member” of the group. Erich Heckel remained connected to Mueller for life, and when "the tender man" died on September 24, 1930 at the age of only fifty-six, Heckel took on the sad duty of signing the works that had remained unsigned as one last service of friendship. The present drawing, Flussufer mit blauem Baum, counts amongst these works. It is a masterpiece of absolute compositional maturity, created in 1924.

We would like to thank Prof. Dr. Dr. Gerd Presler for this information.