Bidspirit auction | Robert Hermann Sterl

Robert Hermann Sterl - Robert Hermann Sterl ”Procession”. 1914.. Robert Hermann Sterl 1867 Großdobritz – 1932 Naundorf/Saxon Switzerland Oil on painting cardboard, laid on hardboard. Faintly legible monogrammed ”R St” lower left. Verso an label with the authenticity confirmation of the artist's widow, Helene Sterl. Framed in a gold-colored frame. WVZ Popova 999; not in WVZ Zimmermann. Provenance: Private collection Dresden; Kunstausstellung Kühl, Dresden, 1979. Robert Sterl undertook five trips to Russia between 1906 and 1914. On three of these trips, he accompanied the Moscow conductor Sergej Alexandrowitsch Koussevitzky, who went on a major concert tour with his orchestra, traveling by steamboat on the Volga River to the mouth of the Caspian Sea. The impressions gained during these journeys, which Sterl recorded in sketches and studies, profoundly shaped him, so much so that he often incorporated them into his subsequent artistic work. ”On his last Volga journey in 1914, [he] recorded, as in previous years, popular market and harbor scenes, porters, dockworkers, prisoners, and repeatedly also processions in which coffins or icons were carried.” (Kristina Popova: Robert Sterl. Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings and Oil Sketches. Dresden 2011, p. 74) It is hardly surprising that these funeral processions left an intense and lasting impression on the artist, as they are firmly rooted in the religion of the Russian Orthodox Church. The numerous people in their colorful robes and traditional costumes, carrying and accompanying the deceased to the cemetery, repeatedly inspired Sterl to ”spontaneous impressionistic painting.” (Popova, p. 74) The present depiction of one of these processions also evokes a riot of colors, in which contours seem to dissolve in red, pink, and golden yellow. Support with tiny pinpricks upper center and lower center. Few retouches at the edges and a slightly larger one at two small flaws lower left. Impasto somewhat compressed. Material adhesions and a flaw on an impasto right center. Monogram on the varnish rubbed. Dimensions: 36.7 x 42 cm, frame 45.6 x 50.5 cm. Robert Hermann Sterl 1867 Großdobritz – 1932 Naundorf/Saxon Switzerland 1881–91 studied at the Dresden Art Academy, including under Leon Pohle, from 1886 master student of Ferdinand Pauwels. 1892 worked with Carl Bantzer in Willingshausen, Goppeln, and Johnsdorf. 1893 study trip to France. 1894–1904 repeated stays in Wittgenborn, Hesse. 1904 appointed teacher at the Dresden Art Academy, 1906 appointed professor. 1906–1914 a total of five trips to Russia, three of them Volga river trips on a steamboat as part of a concert tour by conductor Sergei Alexandrovich Koussevitzky. 1915 elected successor to Gotthardt Kuehl as head of the master studio for painting. 1919 elected member of the Berlin Academy of Arts. 1928 first overview exhibition of Sterl's work in the Kunsthütte zu Chemnitz. 1932 memorial exhibition in the Gemäldegalerie Neue Meister Dresden.