Corinth, Lovis

Corinth, Lovis (1858–1925). German painter, printmaker, and writer, born in Tapiau, East Prussia. He studied at the Academies of Königsberg and Munich, then in 1884–7 at the Académie Julian, Paris, and he was strongly influenced by the painterly brushwork of recent French artists such as Courbet and Manet as well as by Old Masters such as Frans Hals, Rembrandt, and Rubens. After his return to Germany he lived first in Königsberg, then from 1891 in Munich, and from 1901 in Berlin. With Liebermann and Slevogt (both of whom also lived in Berlin) he was recognized as one of the leading German exponents of Impressionism and in the first decade of the century he was a great fashionable success. However, in 1911 he was partially paralysed by a stroke and when he began to paint again (with great difficulty) it was in a much looser and more powerful Expressionist manner, to which he had previously been strongly opposed (he has been described as ‘an eleventh-hour convert to modernism'). He was varied and prolific as a painter and printmaker. His paintings included landscapes, portraits, and still-lifes, and he had a fondness for voluptuous allegorical and religious subjects (The Temptation of St Anthony, Tate Gallery, London, 1908). His prints were mainly dry-points and in his later years lithographs (which he used for the numerous commissions he had for book illustrations). He also made a few etchings and woodcuts. An edition of his writings, Gesammelte Schriften, was published in 1920, and a collection of autobiographical notes was published posthumously in 1926 as Selbstbiographie mit Bildnissen. After the Nazis came to power in 1933 his later works were declared degenerate. Kirchner said of Corinth, ‘In the beginning, he was only of average stature; at the end he was truly great.’