Artwork
Das Kranke Kind (The Sick Child)
Das Kranke Kind (The Sick Child) is an ink print by Lovis Corinth. It dates from 1918 and is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Art.
About this work
Overview
Created in 1918, *Das Kranke Kind* (The Sick Child) is a drypoint print executed in black on laid paper by German artist Lovis Corinth. The image presents a young child lying in bed, swathed in blankets, rendered with stark, gestural lines that emphasize fragility and immediacy. The work exemplifies Corinth’s late‑period focus on raw emotional expression through printmaking.
Subject & Meaning
The composition centers on a sick child, whose curled form and obscured features convey vulnerability and illness. The minimal setting—a faint suggestion of a bed frame and tangled sheets—draws attention to the figure’s condition, evoking a sense of personal concern and the universal experience of caring for the infirm.
Technique & Style
The resulting marks are uneven and scratchy, producing deep, velvety blacks alongside lighter, ragged strokes that suggest hair, fabric folds, and shadow.
Corinth employed drypoint, incising lines directly into laid paper with a sharp needle. The resulting marks are uneven and scratchy, producing deep, velvety blacks alongside lighter, ragged strokes that suggest hair, fabric folds, and shadow. This loose, almost unfinished handling reflects the artist’s shift toward expressionist aesthetics after his 1911 stroke, favoring emotional impact over precise detail.
History & Provenance
Lovis Corinth, trained in Paris and Munich and a former leader of the Berlin Secession, turned increasingly toward expressionism in his later years. *Das Kranke Kind* was produced toward the end of his career, shortly before his death in 1925. The print has circulated in several museum collections and private holdings, documenting Corinth’s late experimentation with print media.
Context
The work emerges from a period of personal and artistic upheaval for Corinth, who, after suffering a debilitating stroke, abandoned the polished naturalism of his early oeuvre. The stark, urgent rendering of a sick child mirrors his own confrontation with mortality and physical limitation, situating the piece within broader early‑20th‑century German expressionist concerns about the human condition.
Artist & collection
Artist
Lovis Corinth was a German artist and writer whose mature work as a painter and printmaker realized a synthesis of impressionism and expressionism.
