Lovis Corinth

Lovis Corinth, born Franz Heinrich Louis Corinth on 21 July 1858 in Tapiau, East Prussia (now Gvardeysk, Russia), was a German painter and printmaker whose long career moved from academic Realism through Impressionism to a rougher, more expressive late style.

He trained at three academies over roughly a decade. He enrolled at the Konigsberg Academy of Fine Arts in 1876, studying under Robert Trossin and Otto Edmund Gunther, then moved to the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, from 1880 to 1884, under Franz von Defregger and Ludwig von Loefftz, with his studies interrupted by military service in 1882 to 1883. After a three-month stay in Antwerp in 1884, where he studied the paintings of Peter Paul Rubens, he enrolled at the Academie Julian in Paris under William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury, returning to Germany in 1887.

He worked first in Munich and Konigsberg before settling in Berlin, where his reputation grew through gallery exhibitions, including shows connected to dealer Paul Cassirer, and through early museum purchases of his work. He became a leading figure of the Berlin Secession. In 1917 the Berlin Academy of Arts gave him the title of professor, in 1921 the University of Konigsberg awarded him an honorary doctorate, and in 1925 he was made an honorary member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts.

Corinth died in Zandvoort, Netherlands, on 17 July 1925, according to the majority of sources reviewed, including Wikipedia and Tate; Britannica gives 12 July 1925 for the date of death, a variant noted here rather than resolved with certainty. One source, Eclectic Light Company, reports the immediate cause as pneumonia; that detail is not corroborated elsewhere in the sources reviewed.

Museums and standard reference sources treat Corinth as a pivotal transitional figure in German art, one who carried an academically trained hand through Impressionism and into a final, urgent style later writers have connected to Expressionism. His standing has been reinforced by continuous institutional attention across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from early purchases by German public collections to his current presence in the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the National Gallery of Art. The Alte Nationalgalerie's 2025 to 2026 exhibition "In Sight! Lovis Corinth, the Nationalgalerie and the Degenerate Art Campaign" reflects ongoing scholarly interest in both his substantial museum holdings and the treatment of his work under the Nazi-era campaign against modern art.

Corinth's market centers on a limited number of high-value paintings, particularly works from his mature Walchensee lake series and figure subjects, rather than a broad, continuously trading body of work. The auction record is Walchensee, Morgennebel (Walchensee, morning fog), which sold for approximately USD 1.49 million at Sotheby's, London, on 3 February 2004, a figure reported consistently across market-data sources. Other notable results place major Walchensee views and still lifes in the high six-figure to low seven-figure euro range at houses including Lempertz, with a wider base of prints and smaller works trading well below those levels.

No currently authoritative catalogue raisonne could be confirmed for Corinth, and there is no single gallery or foundation that formally represents his estate; secondary-market activity runs through multiple dealers, including Galerie Karsten Greve and Galerie Ludorff, and through general and specialist auction houses. Auction catalogues sometimes index him as "Corinth, Lovis," a cataloguing variant that refers to the same painter rather than a different artist. The USD 1.49 million auction high, Walchensee, Morgennebel, Sotheby's, London, 2004, anchors the market, and collectors should weigh provenance, exhibition history, and museum-standard condition review more heavily than any single reported price, given how few high-value transactions anchor the market.