It is the energetic style, as well as the force of the composition and the color application that fascinate us about Corinth's painting to this day. When Corinth took over chairmanship of the Berlin Secession from Max Liebermann in 1911, he was at the peak of his career. However, the stroke he suffered the same year led to a hemiplegia. This condition forced him to paint in different ways, which explains why the paintings he had created since then are characterized by a special power and expressiveness. As early as in 1912, Corinth made a bold statement of his will to live with the famous historical painting "The Blinded Samson", today in the collection of the Berlin Nationalgalerie. It shows Samson tied up with a blood stained cloth over his eyes and his arms in chains, fighting against the pain with all the remaining strength. His own suffering was responsible for the choice of this pictorial theme from the Old Testament, earlier depictions of which can be found in Renaissance and Baroque painting. Rubens and Rembrandt were Corinth's models for this and other historical pictorial themes. Our highly dynamic historical painting "Frauenraub" also goes back to Rubens: Corinth had already dealt with the subject in 1904 in the now lost painting "Frauenräuber" on the basis of Rubens’ "The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus" (around 1618, Alte Pinakothek, Munich). However, this early version of the naked woman captured by two soldiers shows a much more static conception of the subject, which Corinth finally rendered in our painting with painterly furor and maximum movement. Both scenery and lighting are dramatic: The robbery takes place at sunset in front of a bright turquoise-violet sea view with a pink sky. The four male figures who fetch the half-naked woman into their boat are only minimally illuminated by the mysterious spotlight in which Corinth immerses the scenery. It is only the dimly lit faces and the red caps that set particularly effective accents here. In 1918, and thus towards the end of the devastating First World War, Corinth used the brush like a whip to put the blowing hair and dress, the billowing sails and the colorful foaming breakers onto the canvas. As early as in 1917 - after the United States had declared war on Germany - Corinth, deeply moved by the historical situation, had taken up the motif of the fratricide of Cain and Abel from the Old Testament and brought it into the modern age with an exciting perspective under a strongly agitated sky with large ravens ("Cain" , Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf). In "Frauenraub", Corinth also took up a classic motif of human violence and rejection in the face of war, and left us a fascinating masterpiece characterized by the combination of wildly moving motifs and a line liberated from all conventions. From 1996 to 1997, the painting was exhibited alongside numerous other works from museum ownership in the international Corinth retrospective at the Haus der Kunst in Munich, the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the Saint Louis Museum of Art, Missouri, and the Tate Gallery in London. [JS]