Bathers Throwing Reeds. From the Vth annual portfolio of the Brücke, 1909

About the Work

The artists chose the prints for the annual portfolios themselves. This enabled them to demonstrate the quality and diversity of their œuvres to the ‘passive’ members. Whereas in 1909 Schmidt-Rottluff selected only lithographs and etchings for the portfolio devoted to his work, Kirchner’s and Heckel’s portfolios were made up primarily of woodcuts. Owing to the bold graphic flattening that characterizes these works, they are today considered masterworks of the Brücke period.

About the Acquisition

From 1900 onwards, the Frankfurt chemist and industrialist Carl Hagemann (1867‒1940) assembled one of the most important private collections of modern art. It included numerous paintings, drawings, watercolours and prints, especially by members of the artist group “Die Brücke”. After Carl Hagemann died in an accident during the Second World War, the then Städel director Ernst Holzinger arranged for Hagemann’s heirs to evacuate his collection with the museum’s collection. In gratitude, the family donated almost all of the works on paper to the Städel Museum in 1948. Further donations and permanent loans as well as purchases of paintings and watercolours from the Hagemann estate helped to compensate for the losses the museum had suffered in 1937 as part of the Nazi’s “Degenerate Art” campaign. Today, the Hagemann Collection forms the core of the Städel museum’s Expressionist collection.