Kühe auf der Alp. 1918/19.
Oil on canvas.
Gordon 541. Signed, pre-dated "17" and titled on the reverse. 59.5 x 70.5 cm (23.4 x 27.7 in).
In the original artist frame.
• Part of the same private collection for nearly 70 years.
• Consistent provenenace.
• In the original artist frame.
• For the first time on public display during E. L. Kirchner's lifetime in the grand exhibition at Kunsthalle Bern in 1933.
• After Kirchner had relocated to the Davos mountains, the life of the peasants became an important source of inspiration.
• Unusual close-up view of the motif.

The work is documented at the Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Archive, Wichtrach/Bern.

PROVENANCE: Dr. Othmar Huber (1892-1979), Glarus/Switzerland.
Collection Ernesto Blohm, Caracas (acquired from the above in 1954, Stuttgarter Kunstkabinett, auction on May 18 - 20, 1954, lot 983).
Ever since family-owned.

EXHIBITION: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Kunsthalle Bern, March 5 - April 17, 1933, cat. no. 30 (there with the title "Kühe am Mittag", with full-page illu., plate VII).
Expresionismo en Alemania. Exposición conmemorativa del décimo aniversario de la fundación de la Asociación Cultural Humboldt, Asociación Cultural Humboldt and Fundación Eugenio Mendoza, Caracas, November/December 1959, cat. no. 25 (with illu.).
E. L. Kirchner in Privatbesitz. Gemälde, Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Grafik, Richard-Kaselowsky-Haus, Kunsthalle der Stadt Bielefeld, September 14 - October 26, 1969, cat. no. 13.
E. L. Kirchner. Gemälde, Aquarelle, Zeichnungen und Druckgraphik, Kunstverein in Hamburg, December 6, 1969 - January 25, 1970; Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main, February 6 - March 29, 1969, cat. no. 45 (with illu., no. 56).
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Privatsammlung, Galerie Günther Franke, Munich, May 5 until early June 1970, cat. no. 1 (here still dated 1917).

LITERATURE: Stuttgarter Kunstkabinett, Roman Norbert Ketterer, 19th auction, Kunstliteratur, Gemälde, Zeichnungen, Graphik des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, May 18 - May 20, 1954, lot 983, p. 95 (with illu., p. 35, here still dated 1917, with the hand-written number on the reverse).
Donald E. Gordon, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Munichen/Cambridge (Mass.) 1968, cat. no. 541, p. 353 (with illu.).
Hanna Strzoda, Die Ateliers Ernst Ludwig Kirchners. Eine Studie zur Rezeption "primitiver" europäischer und außereuropäischer Kulturen (diss.), Petersberg 2006, p. 320 (footnote no. 2080).