Portrait of writer Georg Hirschfeld and his wife Ella

The painting of Lovis Corinth of 1901, which is a testimony of the artist's mature style, presents the spouses Georg and Ella Hirscheld, who were members of Berlin's bohemian society at the turn of the 20th century. Georg Hirschfeld (1873–1942), the son of a Berlin industrialist of Jewish origin was a recognised writer and playwright, representative of naturalism in German literature (Die Mütter, Zu Hause, Agnes Jordan). He lived and worked in Berlin, Munich and Vienna. Between 1895 and 1905, Corinth belonged to the Friedrichshagener Dichterkreis association; its other members were Gerhart Hauptmann, Walter Leistikow, Edvard Munch, Reiner Maria Rilke, August Strindberg and Stanisław Przybyszewski. The spouses, presented in an interior (she: elegantly dressed, with a faint smile, full of emotions; he: lost in his own thoughts, with an absent look), illustrate Corinth’s recommendations formulated in the textbook on the art of painting “Das Erlernen der Malerei”: “In the case of a man, the interest focuses on the presentation of spiritual features, his hands, his stance and in the case of a woman on the operation of colours. The man is presented more from the spiritual side, the woman decoratively. Also the background is important. (...) Today, simplicity is preferred. Either a single simple tone is applied, the one that is actually seen behind a model, or the entire interior which forms the background.” It was already in 1903 that the painting was presented in the Art Salon of Paul Cassier at Victoriastr. 35 in Berlin. Originally, it was owned by the portrayed Ella Hirschfeld-Petersen and later by Paul Cassier; subsequently, it was purchased by Wilhelm and Frieda Döring and decorated the interior of their Szczecin villa at today’s Wojska Polskiego Street. Between 1925 and 1926, the work, together with 35 other paintings by German painters of the 19th and 20th century, was donated to the Municipal Museum in Szczecin; today, it is the property of the National Museum in Szczecin.

Dariusz Kacprzak