Am Dienstag wird beim Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale in London unter anderem ein Werk von Lyonel Feininger versteigert. Das 1912 entstandene „Raddampfer am Landungssteg“ von Heringsdorf ist ein ganz wundervolles Bild. Es wurde aus dem Nachlass eines New Yorker Kunstsammlers eingereicht und war seit über 30 Jahren nicht mehr in der Öffentlichkeit zu sehen. Als Erlös werden zwischen 1,185 und 1,4 Millionen Euro erwartet.

Aus dem Katalog von Sotheby’s:

Raddampfer am Landungssteg exemplifies Feininger’s perspectival inventiveness at the height of his involvement with the German Expressionist group Die Brücke in 1912. The scene depicts a paddle steamer as it leaves the pier at Heringsdorf, a fashionable seaside resort on the Baltic island of Usedom. It was there during the summer of 1912 that Feininger refined his artistic style, devising innovative pictorial representations of the natural world. …

Between 1908 and 1913, Feininger visited Heringsdorf every summer, making excursions along the Pomeranian coastline. This maritime province of beaches, fishing ports and old Hanseatic villages provided Feiningner with a rich vein of subject-matter. His sketchbooks are filled with studies of sailing boats and imaginary galleons plying the inland seas, and also capture the distinctive atmospheric effects of the Baltic shores. In the present painting, Feininger depicts a contemporary scene that would have been instantly recognisable to the fashionable crowds from Berlin that gathered in Heringsdorf each summer. It shows the paddle steamer Freia pulling astern of the famous Kai.