Tree Lined Road, 1911

About the Work

Heckel and Schmidt-Rottluff had discovered the landscape around Dangast as a source of inspiration for themselves in 1907. Until 1912, Schmidt-Rottluff travelled there every summer to work. It was in this context that he executed “Tree Lined Road”. He translated the sun-scorched earth into gouges that – only shallowly removed from the wooden block – form a tension-charged contrast to the two-dimensional shapes of the trees. Rhythmic strips of shade lend structure to the path.

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.