Technical tests on a work by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt revealed a second canvas underneath—a painting called Szene im Café (Cafe Scene). It dates from 1926, eight years after poor mental and physical health prompted the artist to leave Berlin for rural Switzerland.
The painting on top, Sleigh Trip in the Snow (1927-29), was donated to the Städel in 1987 by a Frankfurt businessman, Kurt Möllgaard. It was in Kirchner’s possession until his death in 1938 and was sold from his estate.
Kirchner was in the habit of stretching more than one canvas over the same frame. In a 1918 letter, he asked the collector Carl Hagemann to check with the buyers of two of his works to see whether they had other paintings underneath. “I have often had to stretch three or four canvases over each other when I haven’t had any frames,” he explained.
Though the Städel has a large collection of works by the Brücke group, of which Kirchner was a founding member, the museum possesses few late works by the artist. Many of the works Kirchner painted in his home near Davos in Switzerland depicted rural life in the mountains. Cafe Scene shows that he maintained his interest in urban life even after he left Berlin, where he had painted his famous street scenes.
“The newly discovered Cafe Scene enriches the Städel’s Expressionist collection with a painting that strikingly illustrates the stylistic changes in Kirchner’s oeuvre during the 1920s,” Philipp Demandt, recently appointed director of the Städel, says.
Both paintings are on display in a small exhibition presenting restoration and research activities at the Städel (until March 2017).