Woman Writing (Siddi Heckel), 1925

About the Work

The large-scale watercolour "Woman Writing" portrays the artist’s wife Siddi Heckel (1891–1982). In terms of style, it bears an affinity to the artist’s self-portrait (to the right). He has again drawn the outlines of the subject’s body distinctly in chalk; in comparison to his own likeness, however, he has made less use of hatching, instead applying planar zones of watercolour to create the effect of shading and plasticity. Heckel’s painted decoration of his (meanwhile destroyed) studio in Osterholz on the Firth of Flensburg is discernible in the background. Consisting of figural scenes, abstracted plant motifs and landscapes, it was intended to symbolize the ideal of the close bond between man and nature.

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.