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Your galleryTwo Bathers on the Fehmarn Coast
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Follow the brush as it changes from thin, quick lines in the leaves to heavy black patches on the rocks, and notice how much paper is left bare.
Kirchner spent the summers of 1912 to 1914 on Fehmarn, an island in the Baltic Sea, and drew and painted nude figures there out in the open. This brush drawing comes from the first of those summers. Two bathers stand among rocks and tall plants on the island’s high coast, all set down in fast strokes of black ink.
brush and black ink on wove paper · sheet: 58.1 × 45.9 cm · National Gallery of Art · Die Brücke
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Two Bathers on the Fehmarn Coast (Zwei Badende am hoher Fehmarnküste)
- Artist
- Ernst Ludwig Kirchner German, 1880 - 1938
- Date
- 1912
- Medium
- brush and black ink on wove paper
- Dimensions
- sheet: 58.1 × 45.9 cm (22 7/8 × 18 1/16 in.)
- Credit line
- Gift of Ruth Cole Kainen
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- National Gallery of Art
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.




