Nude with Hat, 1910 (1920)

About the Work

Kirchner depicted his then partner Doris Große (called Dodo) wearing only a necklace, a large hat and red shoes. Naked but self-confident, she stands in Kirchner’s Dresden studio. The background is formed by wall hangings that were painted by the artist himself and inspired by African art. Kirchner based the design of the nude on Lucas Cranach the Elder’s “Venus”, found in the Städel Museum’s collection. In this work, Kirchner combined his preference for German Renaissance painting with the new influences of non-European art, which he had studied intensively in the Dresden Ethnological Museum. In later years, the artist repeatedly referred to this as his best nude painting.

About the Acquisition

From 1900 onwards, the Frankfurt chemist and industrialist Carl Hagemann (1867‒1940) assembled one of the most important private collections of modern art. It included numerous paintings, drawings, watercolours and prints, especially by members of the artist group “Die Brücke”. After Carl Hagemann died in an accident during the Second World War, the then Städel director Ernst Holzinger arranged for Hagemann’s heirs to evacuate his collection with the museum’s collection. In gratitude, the family donated almost all of the works on paper to the Städel Museum in 1948. Further donations and permanent loans as well as purchases of paintings and watercolours from the Hagemann estate helped to compensate for the losses the museum had suffered in 1937 as part of the Nazi’s “Degenerate Art” campaign. Today, the Hagemann Collection forms the core of the Städel museum’s Expressionist collection.