Black Othello

In 1884 the young Lovis Corinth spent three months in Antwerp, studying in a Belgian painter's studio and working near the busy port. His model for this head was a Black dock worker or sailor he found there, a real man whose name has not survived. Corinth signed the canvas in one corner and, in the other, wrote un Othello, casting this anonymous sailor as a present-day version of the Moor from Shakespeare's play. It was one of his first real successes. When he showed it back home in Königsberg, in what was then East Prussia, it drew genuine praise and helped launch a career that would run for another 40 years. He was still finding his manner here, the brushwork broad and dark, the face lit as if caught for a moment in the studio.