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Lot Essay
Christian Schad’s Porträt Eva von Arnheim was created in 1930 in the artist’s first Berlin studio on Hardenberg Straße. Possessing a disquieting sense of timelessness, it is a sharply rendered example of the artist’s realist style of portraiture, which dominated Schad’s oeuvre in the 1920s. The sitter, Eva von Arnheim, headed a school for modern dance and gymnastics in Berlin. She was a friend of the noted German dancer and choreographer Mary Wigman, an icon of Weimer Germany who had founded her own dance school in Dresden in the 1920s and who, like Von Arnheim, famously adopted an androgynous aura during this period.
Schad first met Von Arnheim at one of the lavish soirées in the home of Dr. Hans Haustein and his wife Friedel in the Bregenzer Straße. Haustein, who was the subject of one of the artist’s most intriguing portraits, was a prestigious gynaecologist specializing in social diseases. Upon arriving to the German capital in 1928, Schad had been introduced by his journalist friend Felix Bryk to the fashionable salon of the Hausteins, which was frequented by many of the prominent artistic and literary figures of the day. As Schad recalled, the atmosphere of these events was one of ‘extreme intellectual and erotic freedom [where] writers, artists, and politicians would mingle with a plethora of scientists, physicians and beautiful women’ (‘Bildlegende for Dr Haustein’; quoted in J. Loyd & M. Peppiatt, Christian Schad and the Neue Sachlichkeit, exh. cat., New York, 2003, p. 232).
Von Arnheim, androgynous and immaculately groomed, is emblematic of the Neue Frau or ‘new woman,’ a feminist ideal and phenomenon that swept through German society following the First World War, and which became a prominent symbol of modernity. With numerous vacancies left by conscripted soldiers in the urban workforce, women appeared in parts of society hitherto forbidden to them, and many of them refused to slot back into their previous conventional roles once the dust of war had settled. As a result, the modern German woman was not only visible in the urban workforce, but in all aspects of society, becoming a fixture in the eccentric and often debauched post-war milieu of Weimar Germany, which so fascinated Schad. As women expanded their horizons, so too did they broaden their corporeal aesthetics. Opting for loose fitting shirts or shifts that deemphasized their feminine curves, they freed themselves from the constraints of their prewar appearance, in which they were expected to exhibit decorum, modesty, and gentle femininity. With her slicked back hair and simple black attire revealing no cleavage, it is only the delicate features of Von Arnheim’s face that suggest her gender. She appears poised and assured in her challenge against the traditional notions of femininity which prevailed in society.
For all its unabashed modernity, the present work is an undeniable homage to the Italian Renaissance, combining a painstakingly detailed portrait of a modern-looking woman with the classical conventions of Quattrocento portraiture. With a seemingly brushless aesthetic, the sitter is depicted in profile against a blank, dappled azure sky, the warm tones of her skin contrasted with the paleness of the background and the cool luster of her dress. Von Arnheim’s nearly translucent complexion and her ambiguous background recalls the work of Raphael - the artist spent three years in Italy between 1922 and 1925, and his time there had a marked influence on his art, laying the foundation for the surgically incisive and almost hyper-real ‘sachlich’ style which would define his career. ‘Italy opened my eyes to what I wanted to do and to what I could do…’ Schad remarked. ‘Ancient art is often more contemporary than the art of our times... In Italy, I found the way to myself’ (‘Mein Lebensweg,’ 1927; quoted in ibid., p. 20).
The sitter’s white ermine stole is the only jolt of colour breaking up the monochromatic expanse of her dress and is perhaps intended, in true Renaissance fashion, to serve as an attribute indicating the sitter’s identity. It inevitably brings to mind Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic portrait featuring a living ermine in The Lady with an Ermine. In Louis Waldman’s article on the painting, ‘An anagrammatic attribute: Christian Schad's portrait of Eva von Arnheim,’ Waldman suggests that the decorative fur is an intricate reference to Von Arnhiem herself. Academic discussions of The Lady with an Ermine indicate that the Greek word for Ermine was for many years believed to be a pun on the sitter’s name. It is therefore possible that Schad, keenly aware of Renaissance painterly conventions, engaged in a similar intellectual play in the present work. As Waldman explains, by ‘substituting one of its vowels, the French word for ermine, “Hermine,” is in fact an anagram of the sitter’s surname... The use of the French for the anagram is hardly surprising in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Berlin between the wars; nor would it have been untypical of the Francophile Schad, who in later years recounted how his 1916 move from Zurich to Geneva was motivated by a desire to hear French spoken instead of German’ (‘An anagrammatic attribute: Christian Schad’s portrait of Eva von Arnheim,’ in The Burlington Magazine, vol. CXXXV, no. 1081, April 1993, pp. 276-277).
Schad painted Porträt Eva von Arnheim in 1930, at the very peak of his involvement with the pictorial ethos of Neue Sachlichkeit. The artist was not well-known beyond a small circle of admirers in his time, and his paintings did not figure in Franz Roh’s pioneering study of the Neue Sachlichkeit movement in 1925, which celebrates its centenary this year. Nevertheless, his work has become emblematic for modern-day viewers as the most engaging of the cool, hyper-detailed brand of objective realism practiced in Germany between the wars, which proved highly influential on the starkly naturalistic portraits of later artists such as Lucian Freud. Porträt Eva von Arnheim remained in Schad’s possession until it entered the private collection of Carl Laszlo by 1972, a psychoanalyst and consummate collector, as well as a friend of the artist.
Schad first met Von Arnheim at one of the lavish soirées in the home of Dr. Hans Haustein and his wife Friedel in the Bregenzer Straße. Haustein, who was the subject of one of the artist’s most intriguing portraits, was a prestigious gynaecologist specializing in social diseases. Upon arriving to the German capital in 1928, Schad had been introduced by his journalist friend Felix Bryk to the fashionable salon of the Hausteins, which was frequented by many of the prominent artistic and literary figures of the day. As Schad recalled, the atmosphere of these events was one of ‘extreme intellectual and erotic freedom [where] writers, artists, and politicians would mingle with a plethora of scientists, physicians and beautiful women’ (‘Bildlegende for Dr Haustein’; quoted in J. Loyd & M. Peppiatt, Christian Schad and the Neue Sachlichkeit, exh. cat., New York, 2003, p. 232).
Von Arnheim, androgynous and immaculately groomed, is emblematic of the Neue Frau or ‘new woman,’ a feminist ideal and phenomenon that swept through German society following the First World War, and which became a prominent symbol of modernity. With numerous vacancies left by conscripted soldiers in the urban workforce, women appeared in parts of society hitherto forbidden to them, and many of them refused to slot back into their previous conventional roles once the dust of war had settled. As a result, the modern German woman was not only visible in the urban workforce, but in all aspects of society, becoming a fixture in the eccentric and often debauched post-war milieu of Weimar Germany, which so fascinated Schad. As women expanded their horizons, so too did they broaden their corporeal aesthetics. Opting for loose fitting shirts or shifts that deemphasized their feminine curves, they freed themselves from the constraints of their prewar appearance, in which they were expected to exhibit decorum, modesty, and gentle femininity. With her slicked back hair and simple black attire revealing no cleavage, it is only the delicate features of Von Arnheim’s face that suggest her gender. She appears poised and assured in her challenge against the traditional notions of femininity which prevailed in society.
For all its unabashed modernity, the present work is an undeniable homage to the Italian Renaissance, combining a painstakingly detailed portrait of a modern-looking woman with the classical conventions of Quattrocento portraiture. With a seemingly brushless aesthetic, the sitter is depicted in profile against a blank, dappled azure sky, the warm tones of her skin contrasted with the paleness of the background and the cool luster of her dress. Von Arnheim’s nearly translucent complexion and her ambiguous background recalls the work of Raphael - the artist spent three years in Italy between 1922 and 1925, and his time there had a marked influence on his art, laying the foundation for the surgically incisive and almost hyper-real ‘sachlich’ style which would define his career. ‘Italy opened my eyes to what I wanted to do and to what I could do…’ Schad remarked. ‘Ancient art is often more contemporary than the art of our times... In Italy, I found the way to myself’ (‘Mein Lebensweg,’ 1927; quoted in ibid., p. 20).
The sitter’s white ermine stole is the only jolt of colour breaking up the monochromatic expanse of her dress and is perhaps intended, in true Renaissance fashion, to serve as an attribute indicating the sitter’s identity. It inevitably brings to mind Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic portrait featuring a living ermine in The Lady with an Ermine. In Louis Waldman’s article on the painting, ‘An anagrammatic attribute: Christian Schad's portrait of Eva von Arnheim,’ Waldman suggests that the decorative fur is an intricate reference to Von Arnhiem herself. Academic discussions of The Lady with an Ermine indicate that the Greek word for Ermine was for many years believed to be a pun on the sitter’s name. It is therefore possible that Schad, keenly aware of Renaissance painterly conventions, engaged in a similar intellectual play in the present work. As Waldman explains, by ‘substituting one of its vowels, the French word for ermine, “Hermine,” is in fact an anagram of the sitter’s surname... The use of the French for the anagram is hardly surprising in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Berlin between the wars; nor would it have been untypical of the Francophile Schad, who in later years recounted how his 1916 move from Zurich to Geneva was motivated by a desire to hear French spoken instead of German’ (‘An anagrammatic attribute: Christian Schad’s portrait of Eva von Arnheim,’ in The Burlington Magazine, vol. CXXXV, no. 1081, April 1993, pp. 276-277).
Schad painted Porträt Eva von Arnheim in 1930, at the very peak of his involvement with the pictorial ethos of Neue Sachlichkeit. The artist was not well-known beyond a small circle of admirers in his time, and his paintings did not figure in Franz Roh’s pioneering study of the Neue Sachlichkeit movement in 1925, which celebrates its centenary this year. Nevertheless, his work has become emblematic for modern-day viewers as the most engaging of the cool, hyper-detailed brand of objective realism practiced in Germany between the wars, which proved highly influential on the starkly naturalistic portraits of later artists such as Lucian Freud. Porträt Eva von Arnheim remained in Schad’s possession until it entered the private collection of Carl Laszlo by 1972, a psychoanalyst and consummate collector, as well as a friend of the artist.