Beschreibung:

Ernst Barlach (1870-1938), an important patinated bronze Expressionist group of a mother and her infant, Russische Bettlerin mit Kind, (Blinde Bettlerin mit Kind); portrayed kneeling, her head draped, the baby across her lap, the integrally cast oval base inscribed E. Barlach; the back edge of the base stamped 1/10 and with the founders H. NOACK BERLIN FRIEDENAU; 34cm high Provenance: The bronze bears two paper labels, stuck with gum, beneath its interior. The first is printed for KUNSTSALON HERM. ABELS, KOLN... It is partially covered by the second, hand written paper, inscribed 12195, Ernest Barlach, Bettlerin und Kind, 1907 Note: Wilhelm Abels (1867-1948) founded a frame factory in Cologne in 1899. Two years later, he added an art store located on Schildergasse. It was not until 1919 though, at the close of the Great War, that the business was re-established, now as Kunstsalon Hermann Abels, on Hohenzollernring. The label suggests that this bronze was offered by Abels at some point after its original sale, which would probably have been through the Flechtheim Gallery Friedrich Schult noted in his 1960 catalogue raisonné of Barlach's bronzes that this model is extremely rare, and that once an edition of ten was announced by the Flechtheim Gallery, only a few models were cast, (Schult I, 74). Schult also published a photograph by Berthold Kegebein from 1935, which shows the artist in his Güstrow workshop in front of the "Frieze of the Listeners"; he is leaning on a rotating work table on which a wooden sculpture of the "Russian Beggar Woman with Child" stands, approx. 60 cm high, but which is not listed in the catalogue raisonné See Kunsthaus Lempertz KG, Cologne, 11th June 2005, lot 624 for another very rare example of this work