82.9 Bonn Bridge and Cathedral

1921

Woodcut, sheet: 15 1/2 x 11 5/8" (38.3 x 29.4 cm); composition: 7 3/4 x 5 3/4" (19.5 x 14.6 cm)

Provenance: Hans Thuar, 1930

Just as Max Beckmann did in his famous view of Frankfurt’s Iron Bridge, Thuar made the structural elements of Bonn bridge the central focus of this woodcut. The skyline of the city, with the two towers of the Bonn Cathedral became a background element, while the broad spans of the bridge dominate the composition. As Eggeling points out, Thuar did very few woodcuts, with most of them produced in the early 1920s. No doubt the popular demand for Expressionist prints at this time played a role in Thuar’s decision to work in the medium. In typical Expressionist fashion, Thuar incorporated the rough texture of the wood itself into the print’s surface to heighten the dynamic effect of the black and white contrasts. Accodring to Eggeling, Thuar made four copies of this woodcut. As with many of his other woodcuts, Thuar chose here a theme that he had already explored in paint. Despite the strength of his experiments in printmaking, Thuar remained, as he himself said, “a painter of colors.”

Accodring to Gisela Macke, Thaur’s daughter, Pohl studied with her father from 1926 to 1929; Pohl wrote in her curriculum vitae that she was still studying with the painter in 1932. She apparently purchased this work directly from the artist. Pohl states in her own notes that the three main figures in this painting are Thuar’s daughters, Gisela, Annelise, and Jane. Gisela Macke, however, maintains that only she and her sister Annelise are portrayed, since Jane was too young at the time. In any case the figures are not really portraits; the daughters simply served as models for this example of one of modern art’s most famous motifs, bathers in a landscape. Thuar, no doubt inspired by similar paintings by Die Brücke and by Macke, did at least five versions of this motif during his most productive phase in the early 1920s. It was not uncommon for him to repeat a favored theme several times, varying the coloring or compositional elements only slightly. Thuar’s knowledge of Cubist form, as well as a sense of color inspired by Marc and Macke, are evident in this scene.

As he had with his Children in a Garden Pool, Thuar used members of his family as models in this picture, which is more intent on conveying a universal theme than on being a specific portrait. Represented in the traditional pose of the Madonna and Child, his wife Henriette and youngest daughter Jane, who was born in 1921. As with so many other themes chosen by Thuar at this time, he painted several versions of the same view. In all of them, the mother holds a plum. While fruit often takes on iconographic significance in traditional scenes of the Madonna and Child–often symbolic of resurrection or fertility–the plum appears nowhere else in Christian imagery. Thuar perhaps intended the plum as a general allusion to the idea of fecundity.