82.118 Swimming Pool (Bedeanstalt)

1920

Etching, sheet: 13 3/4 x 19 5/8" (35 x 50); composition: 7 x 9 1/2" (17.7 x 23.8 cm)

Signed, lr: Lovis Corinth

In a letter to Karl Schwarz on January 7, 1920, Corinth mentions that he hopes the etching of the Schwimm-Anstalt will please his publisher Kirchgraber. Always the businessman, the artist then asks his agent to request from the publisher his agreed upon honorarium. He had already spoken of the same work in another letter dated December 13, 1919. It appears he made three versions of this etching, making minor variations in each plate. The composition demonstrates Corinth’s continued interest in the nude in motion, placed in natural settings.

Corinth did several portrait studies of his mother-in-law Alice Berend; in at least three versions, he chose a frontal pose in which the woman leans her hand against her temple. For publication in Meier-Graefe’s portfolio series Cornith reduced an earlier half-bust study, emphasizing only the massive head with its probing eyes and decisive mouth.

In his article “Wie ich das Radieren lernte” (How I learned etching), Corinth explains the events that brought him to this technique. While studying with the famous French academic painter Bouguereau in Paris, Corinth was advised to become a better draughtsman, since drawing was the area in which the old master felt his German student to be most deficient.

“I thought I could reach the desired goal,” he wrote, “if I tried other techniques. My mentor Otto Eckmann [the well-known Munich Jugendstil artist] encouraged me to experiment with etching...with a hard pencil I tried to persuade the form..the work eventually pleased me so much that I got fed up with all those hideous smearings in color and only wanted to do more work in graphic methods.”

Corinth certainly learned his lesson. While he remained a devoted colorist throughout his life, his efforts in etching included some of the most visually pleasing examples of the medium in the early 20^th century.

Beginning in the 1890s, Corinth became enthralled with mythological and religious subjects, and particularly those dealing with voluptuous and alluring females, the femme fatales so beloved by fin-de-siecle artists. The theme of Salomé was particularly intriguing to Corinth, as it was for so many other artists of his time.

In March of 1919, Corinth sent this etching to the art historian Hans Singer, who was then writing a monograph about the artist. Corinth stated that he could recommend the sketch for publication because “the picture is from my earliest period and therefor would be new to the public.” This remark emphasized that the etching is a simplified and reversed image of his Salomé painting of 1899.

The moment in the story that Corinth chose to depict was, significantly enough, when Salomé receives John the Baptist’s head; to the left is the profile of the executioner; behind her, a servant holding a feathered fan above her head. Corinth, then, concentrates on the fact that Salomé’s task has already been completed; she can savor her victory.