帽子をかぶった半身裸婦

In 1911 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was about to leave Dresden for Berlin, breaking up the shared studio life that his group, the Brücke, had kept for six years. The woman here is Doris Große, called Dodo, his companion through those Dresden years. She was a milliner by trade, which is why the hat matters. She made extravagant ones, and Kirchner gives it a wide dark brim that frames her painted face in acid greens and pinks. He worked fast and cheap in those years. Turn the canvas over and there is another picture underneath, an unfinished portrait of Fränzi, the young girl who modelled for the whole Brücke circle. Kirchner had simply reused the support. The painting later belonged to a Cologne lawyer whose collection survived the Nazi years and passed to the city in 1946.