An uncharacteristic Kern painting?

Theodor Kern’s art is extremely varied stylistically. Not only is there a noticeable difference between his commissioned work for churches, which can sometimes tend towards the conventional, and his studio paintings, but the latter include experiments in a diverse range of styles, including Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism and, in his later years, Abstract Expressionism. Not only does this make it difficult to identify a characteristic ‘Kern’ style, but it can also make it hard to determine whether a particular painting is a ‘genuine’ Kern.

I was contacted recently, via Instagram, by the anonymous owner of a painting (see above) which he or she believed to be by Theodor Kern, but which, to my inexpert eyes, seemed unlike any picture of his that I’d seen before. And yet the signature at the foot of the painting was fairly unmistakable: ‘T.Kern.’ On the back of the painting’s wooden frame is written in pencil in Italian ‘1938 Fantasia “Sobborghi di Parigi” – i.e. ‘Fantasy “Suburbs of Paris”’.

When I first saw this picture, I thought it looked like the cover illustration from a popular novel of the 1930s – a thriller or detective story perhaps. The three characters, who seem to be in a café or bar of some kind, are depicted in almost comic book style. One’s eyes are drawn initially to the blonde woman in a low-cut black dress, her face and figure illuminated by the garish overhead light, sharing a drink with a male figure whose back is turned and face hidden from view, but whose jaunty hat and red scarf given him a raffish air. We follow the eyes of the woman to the third figure, a square-jawed man in a flat cap, standing by the table. Is that an accordion he’s holding: it’s so ill-defined (or badly drawn?) that it might well be something quite different.  Are we meant to intuit from her look that the woman’s interest in this handsome figure is more than merely musical?

Taken as a whole, the painting seems to reproduce a number of popular stereotypes of Parisian life in the 1930s: the femme fatale, her shady companion, their glasses of absinthe (?), the inevitable accordion-player. I wonder, therefore, whether the title is ironic, and the artist is setting out to deliberately reflect those hackneyed myths about the city?

As to the question of whether this is a genuine Kern: the signature seems to indicate that it is. He wasn’t actually in Paris in 1938, as far as we know: he was living in Vienna at the time, though at some point after the Nazi Anschluss in March of that year he fled, firstly to Florence: might this account for the Italian writing on the frame of this picture?

Theodor Kern, ‘French Café’, 1931 (Wardown House Museum and Gallery, Luton)

Of course, Theodor Kern had lived in Paris for a time in the early 1930s, and both during that period and on earlier visits, he created a number of paintings set in cafés, often depicting three people around a table, and whose meanings I’ve sought to unravel in earlier posts. So, we know that the cafés and bars of Paris were a popular setting for Kern as a painter, even if the style of those pictures was very different from this ‘new’ painting. I’d be interested to know what others think: is this a previously unknown painting by Theodor Kern and, if so, does it having any meaning – or indeed value – except as an attempt to capture some popular stereotypes of Parisian life?

A Kern challenge

A few months ago I wrote a post speculating about the possible meanings of Theodor Kern’s 1931 painting, ‘French Café’. Is the man at the table meant to represent the artist himself and is the woman sitting opposite him his estranged wife Christl? Is the third person the ‘other’ woman, threatening the relationship, or could she be another version of Christl? And what is the significance of the fact that the three key figures are all looking past each other?

I was pleased to see that Wardown House Museum in Luton, to whose collection the painting belongs, has turned this speculation into a lockdown activity, presumably aimed mainly at a younger audience, on its Museum Makers website:

Visitors to the website are encouraged to use the painting as a prompt for creative writing, and to think about questions such as: What do you think happened prior to this image? What happened just after this moment was captured? Who is that lady in the background? And what is the relationship between the couple in the foreground? There is encouragement to ‘let your imagination run wild, and the artwork do the talking’, and in the process ‘enhance your knowledge of our collection and learn about Theodor Kern and his work.’ All admirable objectives.

Those taking part have the prospect of seeing their stories eventually appearing in the museum’s ‘Memories of Lockdown’ publication. I’m intrigued see what participants come up with: perhaps one of their stories will provide a convincing solution to the mystery of this intriguing painting!

Elise Naish at an exhibition of abstract paintings by Theodor Kern, Wardown House, 2019 (my photo)

In the meantime, all credit to Wardown House and their enterprising Head of Heritage and Collections, Elise Naish, who has been an enthusiastic promoter of Theodor Kern’s work, and who I suspect had a hand in this initiative.

Theodor Kern and the semiotics of colour

I continue to be intrigued by Theodor Kern’s paintings depicting scenes in a Paris café (I wrote about them here), and I want to test out a theory I’ve developed about what they might signify.

In this post I want to focus on three paintings which share a number of components in common. One, with the title ‘In einem Pariser Restaurant’, dates from 1928 and is now in the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg. The other two, from 1931 and 1932, share the title ‘French Café’ and are in the collection of Wardown House Museum and Gallery in Luton.

Theodor Kern, ‘In einem Pariser Restaurant’, 1928 (Museum der Moderne, Salzburg)

Theodor Kern, ‘French Café’, 1931 (Wardown House Museum and Gallery, Luton)

Theodor Kern, ‘French Café’, 1932 (Wardown House Museum and Gallery, Luton)

In my earlier post about these paintings I expressed the view that the woman in the 1928 picture is almost certainly the artist’s first wife, Christl. My grounds for this belief are, firstly, that the couple always travelled together at this period and Paris was one of their favourite destinations. Secondly, the artist is clearly sitting at the same table as his model, so there’s a good chance she was his companion. And thirdly, the woman bears a resemblance to the female subjects of other paintings by Kern from around this time, not least the ‘young woman in a blue dress’ whose portrait I wrote about most recently in this post and whom I also believe to be Christl.

Theodor Kern, ‘Portrait of a Young Woman in a Blue Dress’ (Wardown House Museum and Gallery, Luton)

In both the 1928 Paris painting and the portrait above, the woman in question is not looking directly at the artist, but off to one side. Neither is she smiling in either picture, as one might expect in a representation of a woman by her artist husband: in the portrait she looks shyly downwards and away from him, while in the café scene she is looking past him, her face rigid and expressionless. Is it too fanciful to read into either or both of these paintings the troubled nature of Theodor’s and Christl’s short-lived marriage?

However, something else that the two pictures have in common is their colour scheme. In the portrait, as the picture’s title suggests, the woman is wearing a blue dress, which is sufficiently low-cut to reveal the top of a pink slip or undergarment beneath. In the Paris picture, the woman wears a blue coat or wrap with just the top of a pink or red dress showing underneath. She is also wearing a deep blue hat or headscarf. I’ve begun to wonder whether Kern used this kind of colour resemblance to indicate the identities of his subjects, in an oblique or subtle way, without needing to name them.

If we turn now to the two almost identical paintings from 1931 and 1932, we can see this colour scheme clearly echoed. In the 1931 picture, the woman occupying the position equivalent to Christl in the 1928 painting (if indeed it is her), and similarly looking off to the left, is also wearing a blue hat and blue coat with a pink or red dress just visible beneath. We should note some other similarities and differences with the earlier painting. In both, the main scene in the foreground is set against a background consisting of customers at other tables and a waiter entering from ‘stage right’, as it were, carrying a tray of drinks: in the 1928 painting, two cups of coffee, in the 1931 version, a carafe and two glasses, and in the 1932 picture just two glasses. In all three pictures there is a bottle on the table in the foreground: in the 1928 painting it’s blue, while in the 1931 and 1932 picture it’s pink. Because of these similarities it’s tempting to see the 1931 and 1932 paintings as later re-presentations, or commentaries on, the scene in the original 1928 picture.

But of course the main difference between the 1928 painting and the 1931 and 1932 café scenes is that, in the latter two, there are two additional figures at the main table. As I noted in my earlier post about these paintings, I’m fairly certain that the male figure in the left foreground represents the artist, Theodor Kern: both because the figure closely resembles Kern’s own self-portraits, and because he is holding pencil and paper in both pictures. He and the woman to the right are looking resolutely past each other in both paintings. Once again, one is tempted to interpret these pictures as reflections on the state of the Kerns’ marriage.

But if these two figures are Theodor and Christl, then who is the third woman in the 1931 and 1932 pictures? When I wrote about these paintings before, I speculated that she might be someone who came between the couple and contributed to the break-up of their marriage. But my reflections on Kern’s possible colour symbolism, together with further scrutiny of the paintings, leads me to wonder whether both women might not be symbolic representations of Christl.

In both pictures the second woman is dressed in pink (though her hat in the first version is beige). In both pictures, unlike the woman in blue, she is looking directly at the man, certainly with admiration and perhaps with love. I’m still not sure of the significance of her hand gestures: in the first picture she seems to be holding a flower and in the second her hand is raised, whether as a signal to the waiter or a gesture towards the man at the table is unclear. Nor am I sure what significance to read into in the fact that her hands are bare, whereas at least the left hand of the first woman is gloved: in one case, in black in the other in white.

There is enough of a resemblance between the two women to lead me to speculate that the two women might represent different versions of Christl, perhaps at different stages in her relationship with Kern. Might the woman in pink be an earlier version, still fixated on her new husband, while the woman in blue represents Christl at a later stage, when her affection has cooled, and both she and Theodor are caught up in their own separate worlds and no longer communicating or engaging with each other? In which case, the colour pink might represent warmth and affection, while blue symbolises coolness and melancholy or sadness.

In the absence of any surviving commentary on these paintings by the artist himself, I can’t be sure if these speculations about their ‘meaning’ have any substance. And of course the value of any work of art is independent of its biographical significance, and no one likes art that is overly programmatic or schematic – or, as Keats said of a certain kind of poetry, has a ‘palpable design’ on us. But the very absence of autobiographical comment by Kern means that one is bound to look to his art for clues about his life, and particularly about this critical period in the late 1920s and early 1930s when he was undergoing the crisis in his personal life that would lead to his religious conversion.

Scenes in a Paris Café

Paris played an important role in Theodor Kern’s artistic and spiritual development. As a young man, he was strongly influenced by French artists like Cézanne and Gauguin, and when he became restless and unhappy during his first marriage to Christl Engelhart, the city served as a symbol of what Karl Heinz Ritschel describes as the artist’s ‘passionate desire to enjoy the life of the “great world”.’ And it would be the location for the spiritual crisis that had such a profound impact on Kern’s art, and his life.

It’s not clear when Kern made his visit to the French capital, but he and Christl seem to have travelled there together, as well as to the south of France, in the late 1920s. This painting, the first of many to take a Parisian café or restaurant as its setting, dates from 1928. I’m fairly sure that the woman in the foreground is modelled on Christl:

‘In einem Pariser Restaurant’, 1928 (Museum der Moderne /Rupertinum, Salzburg)

However, it was following the breakdown of his marriage in about 1931 that Kern’s more momentous sojourn in Paris took place, following months of restless wandering around Europe. According to Ritschel [my translation]:

The painter kept travelling to the South. Favourite places included Taormina in Sicily…but then Roquebrune and Mentone on the Cote d’Azur, Florence and other Italian cities, and above all to Paris as the global centre of modern painting, where Kern devoted himself to studying modern painters, but also the works in the Louvre. Kern spent 1931/2 in Paris. It was a time when young artists from Europe and the New World were pouring into Paris; they led a wild, energetic life. So it was with Kern, who had separated from his wife and felt released. Like many other artists, he was perpetually in financial distress and at times survived by making and selling portraits in cafés.

Inevitably, the portraits that Kern was commissioned to paint in Parisian cafés are either in private collections or have not survived. However, public collections of the artist’s work do include one or two paintings that he seems to have created out of personal interest, such as these of women seated at a table, both with the title ‘French Café’, both dated 1931, and both now in the Wardown Park Museum collection in Luton:

But it is Kern’s two versions, from 1931 and 1932 respectively, of another scene in a Paris café – a man and two women who are physically close together but pointedly not interacting with each other – that are perhaps his most intriguing creations from this period. Like the two paintings reproduced above, both are entitled ‘French Café’ and both are in the Wardown collection. I’m reproducing them in date order, though to my inexpert eye the first version seems more finished and accomplished:

These two paintings appear to take their basic structure from the 1928 restaurant picture, featuring as they do a number of customers in the background, a waiter coming forward with a tray in the middle ground, and a female figure at front right. In the 1931 version she is looking off at an angle into the middle distance, as in the 1928 picture, while in the 1932 version her face is turned towards the male figure, though their eyes certainly do not meet. The similarity between the background figures in the two paintings reinforces the sense that these are two attempts at depicting the same scene.

I would venture to suggest that the male figure is the artist himself. Not only is he holding paper and pencil in both versions, but he strongly resembles at least one of Kern’s self portraits from around this period:

‘Untitled’ (self-portrait) (Wardown Park Museum, Luton)

So, if the man in the paintings is Kern, does this mean that the woman sitting opposite him, dressed in blue in both cases, is Christl? And if so, is it going too far to interpret these two paintings, and perhaps the 1928 picture also, as reflections on the state of the artist’s doomed marriage? The characters are looking past, rather than at each other – and there are certainly no smiles. But if this is the case, then who is the third woman, in pink, between them, and what is the meaning of her hand gestures, particularly her raised hand in the 1932 painting? In both pictures, her eyes are turned towards the man. Was there a woman, in real life, who came between Theodor and Christl, or is this scene more symbolic?  Finally, I wonder if there is any connection between these two women, and the two women in the other French café paintings from 1931, in one of which a woman in blue is comforting a woman in pink?

Whatever was in the artist’s mind (and we’ll probably never know), these paintings – and, in my view, the 1931 version in particular – are among Kern’s most emotionally arresting and intriguing works. The 1931 version seems to be in an almost naive realist style – all clean lines and bright colours – which eschews the Impressionist blurrings and Expressionist experimentation of his earlier paintings, though something of the same style can also be seen in these two pictures from the same period:

‘Picnic’, 1934 (Wardown Park Museum, Luton)

‘Rural Scene’ (Wardown Park Museum, Luton)

Update

See also this more recent post.

Years of change: 1931 – 1938

Following on from my last post, about Kern’s Salzburg period, the next section of Ziegeleder’s biographical account of the artist is entitled ‘Jahre der Wandlung 1931 – 1938.’ This is my fairly loose translation:

1931 was the year of major change in Kern’s life, and, surprisingly, it was Paris, where the younger generation of artists from all over Europe were at work, that provided the setting. Into this wild, unconventional, life, outwardly troubled by financial troubles but somewhat relieved by occasional sales of portraits in Parisian cafes, there came a young Swiss writer, P.-W. M., described as a kind, helpful and unselfish person. The details of how this friendship came about are unclear, but it’s known that the two men spent their nights walking and philosophising through the streets of Paris and by the Seine. One morning, Kern was standing in front of the gate of a Benedictine monastery, where he knew a monk who spoke German. But he waited a long time, and eventually, tired of waiting, Kern told himself that God could be served anywhere, and left. But from this time onwards Kern was a different person. Of course, he was already a Catholic and from an old Catholic family, so it would be inappropriate to speak of a conversion in the sense of a change of faith, but now he turned to a life of profound piety and humility, for which there were certainly parallels in his father’s family. In this religious spirit he would live his life as a man and an artist until its God-given end.

Theodor Kern, ‘French Café’, 1931 (Wardown Park Museum, Luton)

At just the right time, an invitation from England reached Kern in Paris. Some time before, he had met members of an English family who were on holiday in Salzburg, and whose portraits he had painted.The pleasure that these pictures gave in England earned him an invitation and the prospect of further portrait assignments. Kern soon set off, though he returned to Paris briefly to finally close up his lodgings there, and then stayed for a time in a bungalow in Newbury, to the west of Windsor, where he led a simple but meditative life. When the author visited him in England during the summer months of 1933 – the visit lasted several months – he had already moved to Windsor and was living in a small lodging house. At the same time, he was beginning to move once again in well-connected artistic circles, which would serve him well in 1938. In this early English period he created a large number of portraits, but above all landscapes, extremely delicate watercolours, of Windsor, Eton, Slough and other places. His watercolour technique was particularly suitable for capturing the delicately nuanced shades and clear, damp air of the English landscape. He even taught at Eton College and was also keen on restoring old paintings.

Theodor Kern, ‘Blick auf Windsor Castle’, 1933

His mother’s illness and death brought Kern back to Salzburg in 1934. While there he fulfilled a number of fresco and portrait commissions, but soon afterwards he made Vienna his main home. The author still remembers well his studio in the makeshift, converted attic of a house in the Rotenturmstraße. In this final and definitive move to Vienna several considerations played a decisive part. Until 1937 Kern probably maintained his small apartment in the family home in Salzburg, which now partly belonged to him, but after his mother’s death this refuge was no longer available, though his sister’s door was always open to him. His memories of Salzburg were also an obstacle to the consistent pursuit of his new path. His circle of friends, which in Salzburg had been dominated by the Schuchter family, in Vienna had Professor Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand as its dominant personality, and this circle also helped Kern to progress and become established in his new-found mental attitude and spiritual strength.

Rotenturmstraße, Vienna

Among other things, Kern was greatly indebted to Dietrich von Hildebrand for an extremely happy artistic retreat of several weeks in 1935 at Panon Halma, an impressive Hungarian Benedictine monastery, magnificent and rich in treasures, where he was a guest and in return gave the abbot lessons in German conversation. Kern remained a faithful friend of this abbot until his death in South America. Moreover, Kern was also a guest at Hildebrand’s villa in Florence, where in 1936 he completed a number of beautifully composed and colourful landscapes in oil. They recall his early Salzburg period, even as they demonstrate the further development of his artistic skill; and indeed Kern never denied either his beginnings or his development: far from it. In Vienna Kern also frequented a circle of artists and intellectuals interested in the arts and brought together by Frau Dr W., a patron of the arts. This was not a time of restless creation, but rather a time of thinking, meditating and discussing. It is true that portraits and compositions were created, but Kern himself never talked or wrote about this time in Vienna, and it is also known that he destroyed much of his work from this period. From this it might be concluded that he felt there was still a gap between his spiritual state and its adequate artistic expression, which was yet to be achieved and therefore remained unsatisfactory.

Theodor Kern, ‘Wood, Hungary’, 1936 (Wardown Park Museum, Luton)

As the year 1938 approached, Kern was confronted more and more with the imminent fate of those who would eventually emigrate. Although he had always been apolitical, he saw his circle of friends and confidants increasingly faced with the consequences of the political situation, which in the end also threatened him. He was not just an artist, he was also human, and he tried to do God’s will, wherever and however he could. He escorted a frightened family across the border to Czechoslovakia, helped a young priest to burn documents and files, brought a priest of Jewish descent safely across the frontier, and finally escaped himself to Trieste himself, accompanied by somebody who was under threat, and then alone to Florence, where he first stayed at the Hildebrand villa. In the autumn of 1938 he was allowed to travel to Switzerland, to the home of Balduin Schwarz’s family in Fribourg, from where he finally reached England via Paris, thanks to the help of his former English friends.

The author has wrestled with the question of whether or not he should describe these years of great change in the present account. He takes responsibility for them on the grounds that this biography would otherwise remain incomplete and that it would otherwise be difficult to justify the life that Theodor Kern created for himself. Some names have been deliberately omitted, while others, whose bearers are proud of their willingness to help Kern, have been legitimately made known. Kern was bold in fighting, as an artist, for his art; but in other ways, he was by no means quarrelsome or even militant, but rather amenable, tolerant and devout. It became apparent that it was important for this objective account of his life to enable the reader to understand his subjective decision to abandon his homeland.

Kern’s ‘conversion’: a footnote

Ziegeleder points out, in a note to the above account, that not all of Kern’s family were Catholic: his mother Ottilie, who was from Thuringia, Germany, was Protestant. He also notes that there is an alternative version of Kern’s encounter with the Benedictine monk in Paris, in which it was the monk himself who, ‘mindful of the value of artistic creation, and especially of ecclesiastical art’, made the point that God could be served anywhere. I find Ziegeleder’s account of this transformative moment in the artist’s life rather compressed and enigmatic. Karl Heinz Ritschel’s version, while obviously drawing on Ziegeleder as a key source, is more expansive, and makes it crystal clear that Kern was actually seeking admission to the monastery –  he wanted to become a monk:

Early one morning, Kern stood at the door of a Benedictine monastery and waited for a monk he knew; but he did not come for a long time. Kern, who wanted to be admitted to the monastery, went away and told himself that he could serve God everywhere. A second version goes that the monk advised the artist to serve God in his art. In any case, this change was extremely swift and decisive. For the remainder of his life Kern was deeply religious.