Bildnis der Erna Schilling

Kirchner met Erna Schilling, a dance-hall performer, in Berlin in 1912, and she became his companion for the rest of his life. He painted this the next year, in 1913, the same year his artists' group Die Bruecke broke apart in the city. Berlin had sharpened his style: the softer nudes of his Dresden years give way to angular faces, nervy colour and the elongated, mask-like features he was using for his famous street scenes of the same moment. Erna's long neck and narrow face here are the type he returned to again and again. She nursed him through the breakdown he suffered in the First World War, and stayed with him until his death in 1938.