Still life with chrysanthemums and amaryllis

In 1922, four years after the First World War, Germany was sliding into the inflation that would wipe out its savings within a year, and that June its foreign minister, Walther Rathenau, was shot dead in Berlin. You would not guess any of it from this canvas. The Belvedere points out how completely Corinth's pictures of these years ignore the politics and money troubles around them. Chrysanthemums and amaryllis fill almost the whole surface, laid on in thick, fast strokes of red, pink, white and yellow until single blooms dissolve into patches of colour. Near the bottom you can make out a brown jug, vases and a heap of fruit. The painting went to Vienna straight from his studio, where the Österreichische Galerie, today's Belvedere, bought it with one of his landscapes. His signature and the date sit in the lower corner.