Collection

Three Bathers on the Beach

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Brooklyn Museum photograph

Object Label

Influenced in part by Henri Matisse, whose paintings he saw exhibited in Berlin in 1909, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner developed a radical and forceful pictorial language of flattened space, expressive figural distortion, and vivid color. This composition recalls traditional, idyllic pastorals while also reflecting his own free lifestyle at a lake near Dresden, where he relaxed and bathed nude with friends. Kirchner claimed that “the poet Walt Whitman was responsible for my outlook on life” and that Whitman’s sexually charged 1855 poem Leaves of Grass “was and still is my comfort and encouragement.” These lines from the poem seem to reflect the atmosphere of his print: “I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked, I am mad for it to be in contact with me.”

Caption

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (German, 1880–1938). Three Bathers on the Beach, 1909. Color lithograph in red, yellow, green, blue and violet on wove paper, image: 20 x 23 1/2 in. (50.8 x 59.7 cm) sheet: 21 3/4 x 25 13/16 in. (55.2 x 65.6 cm) frame: 27 3/4 × 31 1/4 × 1 3/4 in. (70.5 × 79.4 × 4.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum, By exchange, 43.124. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

Gallery

Not on view

Title

Three Bathers on the Beach

Date

1909

Geography

Place made: Germany

Medium

Color lithograph in red, yellow, green, blue and violet on wove paper

Classification

Print

Dimensions

image: 20 x 23 1/2 in. (50.8 x 59.7 cm) sheet: 21 3/4 x 25 13/16 in. (55.2 x 65.6 cm) frame: 27 3/4 × 31 1/4 × 1 3/4 in. (70.5 × 79.4 × 4.4 cm)

Signatures

Signed in graphite, lower right: "E.L. Kirchner 09"

Inscriptions

Lower left in graphite: "Handdruck"

Markings

Stamped on verso: "Kunstverein / Jena" verso: purple stamp: "Kunstverein Jena" verso: graphite, "NY 2975" verso: purple stamp: "<K" verso: u.l., graphite, "No 473, F2133 Picknick der Badenden (756) 1904-09" (reading of some of the numbers may be questionable)

Credit Line

By exchange

Accession Number

43.124

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Artists and makers

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

15 works in the collection