"Sonne im Schilf" (Sun in the Reeds) testifies to Max Pechstein's fascination with the unique depiction of light and landscape. The artist repeatedly painted the sun and sea. He was enchanted by the play of the waves and how the light danced on them. He was mesmerized by the exuberant play of colors and shapes in the clouds and waves, the changing times of day, and the changing weather. Our painting is unique because Max Pechstein put all his expressiveness and sentiment into a decidedly small section of the landscape staged as a large format. There is no view of a vast landscape or the sea. Instead, Max Pechstein focused on a small section of a bank covered with dense reeds and fish traps set up to dry in front of a row of trees. The warm and clear sunlight becomes tangible in the bright yellow sky; trees, reeds, and the formally unique reflection of the sun make the painting glow. Max Pechstein pulls the sun down to the ground, making it a bold and extraordinary backdrop for the scene alone. This reflection appears like a Delaunay-like color spectacle between nature and the color of the sun's reflection; these formal differences make the scene a genuinely extraordinary composition.
Unsurprisingly, the painting in question comes from the significant collection of Carl Steinbart (1852–1923). Steinbart (fig.) was an authorized signatory at the bank Mendelsohn & Co. in Berlin, and he “compiled not only a collection of over sixty Max Slevogt paintings after 1918 but also a considerable collection of expressionist art, including numerous works by Pechstein” (Soika, vol. 1, p. 125). It is said that the earliest work in the collection was a version of Gustave Courbet's “La Vague.” Steinbart's collection included a total of 25 Pechstein paintings, among them “Lotte mit Kopftuch” (Soika 1920/43) (fig.), the earliest of which was from 1917. By 1918, they must have met in person during a portrait commission for a portrait of his daughter Dora (“Die chinesische Jacke,” Soika 1918/44).