Thomas Corinth with Panama Hat - Lovis Corinth

A fluid, expressive watercolour portrait of the artist's son, Thomas, captured with loose brushwork and a muted, atmospheric palette.

This portrait of Thomas Corinth, the artist's son, demonstrates the fluid and expressive approach Lovis Corinth adopted in his later years. Executed in 1918, the work captures a sense of immediacy through the application of watercolour. Corinth uses a loose, gestural style, allowing the pigment to bleed and pool across the paper, which creates a soft, atmospheric quality around the subject.

The composition focuses on the boy's face, framed by the brim of a Panama hat. Corinth employs a palette of muted blues, earthy browns, and subtle greens, which contrast with the pale, unpainted areas of the paper. The brushwork is confident and rapid, reflecting the artist's move away from the rigid academic training of his early career toward a more subjective, emotive mode of representation. The freckles on the boy's face are rendered with small, deliberate dabs of colour, adding a touch of realism to the otherwise abstracted treatment of the clothing and background.

Corinth was a central figure in the Berlin Secession, and this piece reflects the transition in German art during the early twentieth century. By 1918, his style had become increasingly liberated, prioritising the emotional weight of the subject over precise anatomical accuracy. The portrait serves as an intimate record of family life, rendered with the technical freedom that defined his later output. The signature and date are visible in the lower right corner, confirming the provenance of this study. This print captures the delicate interplay of light and shadow characteristic of Corinth's watercolour technique, offering a glimpse into the domestic world of one of Germany's most significant painters of the period.