Lyonel Feininger
Steam Train (Vorbeifahrender Güterzug auf Bahndamm)
1908
Coloured chalks and pen and ink over pencil drawing on sketchbook paper with perforated side margin 21 x 25.9 cm. Framed under glass. - Slight marginal defects.
The theme of the train is also a repeatedly recurring motif in Feininger’s drawings. Especially in the early works, as in the case of the coloured pencil and pencil drawing from1908 here, the steam locomotive becomes an admired machine and sometimes also an untamed monster possessing an unpredictable power. In the drawing laid out in ink, for example, it thunders along a high railway embankment that suggests a sense of speed through its diagonal course. To make the scene more dramatic, Feininger has employed thick orange-and-black smoke and depicted a blue-and-grey embankment with a man leaning on a gate in its shadow.
Provenance
Achim Moeller Fine Art, New York (label verso on frame backing); Hauswedell & Nolte, Hamburg, Auction 12 June 1992, Lot 224; Private collection, Hamburg
Exhibitions
New York 1990 (Achim Moeller Fine Art), Lyonel Feininger, cat. 29; Baden 1991 (Stiftung Langmatt), Lyonel Feininger 1871-1956. Lokomotiven und Eisenbahnlandschaften, cat. 21, with col. ill.; Berlin 2008/09 (US Embassy Berlin in cooperation with the Kulturbahnhof Weimar), Transfer. Feininger zeichnet, p. 50 f., with col. ill.