Laufende Badende. 1909.
Black Chalk drawing.
With the estate stamp of the Kunstmuseum Basel (Lugt 1570 b) and the partially illegible handwritten registration number “K Dre / Bf [..] 3” on the reverse. On creme wove paper. 36.4 x 46.1 cm (14.3 x 18.1 in), the full sheet. [CH].


• First published during the artist's lifetime.
• The casual nudity of the bathers at the Moritzburg Ponds was an important source of inspiration for E. L. Kirchner and his fellow Brücke artists: there is probably no other motif so characteristic of their expressionist works.
• At the same time, Kirchner created the paintings “Bathers in Moritzburg” (1909/26, Tate London) and “Badende" (1909, Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal).
• The color woodcut “Mit Schilf werfende Badende” (Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Gercken 375), from the same year, features a very similar figure composition.

This work is documented in the Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Archive, Wichtrach/Bern.

PROVENANCE: Estate of the artist (Davos 1938, Kunstmuseum Basel 1946).
Stuttgarter Kunstkabinett Roman Norbert Ketterer, Stuttgart (1954).
Hermann Gerlinger Collection, Würzburg (with the collector's stamp, Lugt 6032).

EXHIBITION: Schleswig-Holsteinisches Landesmuseum, Schloss Gottorf, Schleswig (permanent loan from the Hermann Gerlinger Collection, 1995-2001).
Kunstmuseum Moritzburg, Halle an der Saale (permanent loan from the Hermann Gerlinger Collection, 2001-2017).
Buchheim Museum, Bernried (permanent loan from the Hermann Gerlinger Collection, 2017-2022).

LITERATURE: Will Grohmann, Zeichnungen von Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Dresden 1925, cat. no. 24.
Heinz Spielmann (ed.), Die Maler der Brücke. Sammlung Hermann Gerlinger, Stuttgart 1995, p. 145, SHG no. 131 (illu.).
Hermann Gerlinger, Katja Schneider (eds.), Die Maler der Brücke. Inventory catalog Hermann Gerlinger Collection, Halle (Saale) 2005, p. 304, SHG no. 689 (illu.).

"We were living in a state of absolute harmony, we worked and bathed. Whenever we were short of a male model as counterpart, one of us would fill in."
Max Pechstein about the "Brücke"artists at the Moritzburg Ponds, in: Erinnerungen, ed. by Leopold Reidemeister, Wiesbaden 1960, pp. 41-43.

Margins and corners somewhat browned. The upper edge of the sheet slightly irregular, there and in the upper right edge of the sheet with isolated tiny paper losses. Isolated browned spots. Isolated creases and crimped spots, predominantly in the area of the corners, a somewhat clearer crease in the upper left. Isolated tiny closed tears in the upper and right edge of the sheet. Slight paper thinning in the upper left and right margins (visible against backlight). Tiny pinholes in the corners of the sheet, probably from the making.