Details — Click to read
On chamois Velin. Signed on the lower right and numbered “18/50” on the lower left.
Earlier catalogues raisonnés: Beckmann list 152; Glaser 149; Gallwitz 143.
Hofmaier lists 6 proofs in the three states. Total edition: 150 copies published by R. Piper & Co. Munich. 50 copies on Japan and 100 on wove paper, 50 of them numbered by Günther Franke.
Depicted is Minna Beckmann-Tube, the artist’s first wife. She was a painter and singer and was married to him from 1906 to 1925. Despite his marriage that year to Mathilde (Quappi) Kaulbach, the two remained friends and in 1951 Minna founded the Max Beckmann Society in Gauting near Munich. From 1918 to 1925 she was engaged at the opera in Graz and sang mainly in Wagner operas.
Beckmann also titled this woodcut ‘Portrait Mink’. She is seen as a bust portrait in a slight torsion. Her upper body is turned to the left, while her head is slightly tilted to the right and her eyes in particular are looking to the far right. Her right hand grasps her left shoulder. In front of her, on an unrecognisable stand, there is a candle in a candlestick on the left and a cup on the right. A window with a closed shutter can be seen behind her head on the right, and a cat lying down in front of it to the right.
