Name: KÄTHE KOLLWITZ (1867-1945)
Brand: Trommler ('Drummer')
Price: 7500.00 GBP
Availability: InStock

KÄTHE KOLLWITZ (1867-1945)
Trommler ('Drummer')
signed Kollwitz (lower right)
charcoal, gouache, pencil and pen and ink on buff joined paper
60 x 26 cm. (23⁵⁄₈ x 10¹⁄₄ in.)
Executed in 1901

Julius Freund (1869-1941), Berlin & London, by 1933; then by descent; his estate sale, Galerie Fischer, Lucerne, 21 March 1942, lot 144.
Joseph Jans, Lucerne; acquired at the above sale; at least until May 1946.
With Kunsthandlung August Klipstein [Gutekunst & Klipstein], Bern (their stock number 25984); acquired on 10 August 1946.
With Buchholz Gallery [Curt Valentin], New York; acquired from the above on 10 January 1947.
George Efron, New York; by 1959 and at least until 1972.
Sotheby's, New York, 12 November 1987, lot 178.
Acquired at the above sale; then by descent to the present owners.

The present work is being offered for sale pursuant to an agreement between the consignor and the Heirs of Julius and Clara Freund. This resolves any dispute over ownership of the work, and title will pass to the buyer.

H. Bittner, Kaethe Kollwitz - Drawings, New York & London, 1959, no. 19, p. 21, ill. n.p. (titled 'Trommeljunge').
O. Nagel, Käthe Kollwitz - Die Handzeichnungen, Berlin, 1972, no. 180, p. 214, ill. p. 215.

Berlin, Galerie Paul Cassirer, Kaethe Kollwitz zu ihrem 50. Geburtstag, April - May 1917, no. 41(titled '"Carmagnole" Der Trommler').
Bern, Kunstmuseum, Gedächtnisausstellung Käthe Kollwitz, May - July 1946, no. 138, p. 22 (titled 'Studie zu dem trommelnden Jungen auf der Radierung "Tanz um die Guillotine"' and dated 'circa 1901').
Hamburg, Kunsthalle, Aus der Werkstatt des Künstlers - Druckgraphik und vorbereitende Zeichnungen der Sammlung Hegewisch, Part I, March 1999 - October 2000, p. 99, ill. p. 50.
Hamburg, Kunsthalle, Mit dem inneren Auge sehen - Meisterwerke aus der Sammlung Hegewisch, September 2016 - January 2017, no. 15, p. 76, ill. p. 48.

This drawing was originally part of the collection of Julius Freund (1869-1941), a German Jewish textile manufacturer in Berlin and an important collector closely connected with artists such as Käthe Kollwitz. Persecuted under the National Socialist regime, Freund fled to England with his wife Clara in 1939. Most of their collection had previously been transferred to Switzerland in 1933. After Julius Freund’s death in exile in London in 1941, Clara Freund sold the remaining works on 21 March 1942 in Switzerland at Galerie Fischer, Lucerne. The proceeds were shared between her and their daughter, Gisèle Freund, who had fled to Buenos Aires via Paris in 1933. Gisèle Freund became one of the most influential and successful portrait photographers of the 20th century.

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Lot Essay

This large and impressive drawing is a preparatory study for the drummer boy seen in the foreground at right in Kollwitz's important early etching Die Carmagnole, presumably created the same year, 1901. The carmagnole was a song and unruly dance popular during the French Revolution.
For an impression of the finished etching, please see lot 268.