India Phillips
Managing Director UK
Lot 36AR
Kurt Schwitters(1887-1948)Untitled (Lake Windermere)
11 October 2018, 17:00 BST
London, New Bond StreetSold for £17,500 inc. premium
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Aimée Honig
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Frederick Millar
Specialist, Head of Sale
Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948)
Untitled (Lake Windermere)
signed with the artist's initials and indistinctly dated 'KS 46' (lower right)
oil on board
31.9 x 38.5cm (12 9/16 x 15 3/16in).
Painted in 1946
signed with the artist's initials and indistinctly dated 'KS 46' (lower right)
oil on board
31.9 x 38.5cm (12 9/16 x 15 3/16in).
Painted in 1946
Footnotes
Provenance
Ida 'Jill' Blundell Collection, Sussex (a gift from the artist).
Thence by descent to the present owners.
Literature
K. Orchard & I. Schulz, Kurt Schwitters, catalogue raisonné 1937 - 1948, Hannover, 2006, no. 3283 (illustrated p.537).
The present work was painted during the artist's exile in England and is distinguished by important early provenance. The first owner was the sister of Edith 'Wantee' Thomas who was Schwitter's beloved companion with whom he spent the last decade of his life. Forced to flee Nazi Germany in 1937 and then Norway in 1940, Kurt Schwitters moved to London following his release from the Hutchinson Internment Camp in 1941. Schwitters first visited the Lake District, a mountainous region in North West England in 1942, and moved there permanently in 1945 with Edith who was later to manage his estate after his death.
Painted in the years following his move to Cumbria, Untitled (Lake Windermere) depicts the lakeside region near the small town of Ambleside where Schwitters and Edith settled. Schwitter's gifted the painting to Edith's sister, Ida Blundell, and it has remained with the family ever since.