Autoportrait avec sa femme Charlotte Berend-Corinth et une coupe de mousseux

Lovis Corinth painted this in his Berlin studio in October 1902, a few months before his wedding. The young woman on his lap is Charlotte Berend, 21 years old and his first student: the year before, he had opened a painting school for women in Berlin, and she had walked in as his very first pupil. Within months they were together, and this double portrait marks their engagement. He wraps one arm around her and lifts a glass of sparkling wine toward us with the other, flushed and openly pleased, while she looks out more steadily. They married early the next year, and he would go on painting her for the rest of his life.