Abend am Moorkanal. 1939.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated in the lower right. Titled "Moorkanal" by a hand other than that of the artist on the reverse of the stretcher. 64 x 47.2 cm (25.1 x 18.5 in). [CH].


– Subtly nuanced and mature landscape painting from the late period of one of the most important German landscape painters of his time.
– After the early death of his wife Paula Modersohn-Becker, the artist moved to Fischerhude in the summer of 1908.
– The peatland inspired him to lyrical and expressive paintings that took up Symbolist and Romantic elements, particularly from the 1920s onwards.
– Until January 12, 2025, the Otto Modersohn Museum in Fischerhude presents the exhibition “Otto Modersohn – Retrospektive. Sehen – Fühlen – Machen”.

PROVENANCE: Private collection Northern Germany.
Private collection Northern Germany (inherited from the above in 2000).

“With a work deeply rooted in the northern German landscpae, he is considered one of the pioneers of modern painting and a leading representative of a painterly conception of nature.”
Küster, Bernd, “Modersohn, Otto” in: Neue Deutsche Biographie 17 (1994), pp. 598-599 [Online-Version]; URL: https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/pnd118582925.html#ndbcontent.

“Nature shows its character everywhere and in everything, an appearance that has nothing to do with human creation. A painter must express this. A painting must be created the way nature itself does, I would say. You have to give chance free rein; in this way something can arise that is somewhat equal to nature.”
Otto Modersohn, diary, February 2, 1895, quoted in: https://www.otto-modersohn-museum.de/info.

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