Rosen, Tulpen und Flieder 1916

Lovis Corinth made this painting of roses, tulips, and lilacs with oil on canvas, and it feels like such an alive and present act. I can imagine him attacking the canvas, trying to capture the immediacy of the floral arrangement. There’s a sense of trial and error, building and shifting, of wiping away and starting again. The brushwork is so full of energy, look at the impasto, the peaks and valleys of paint adding texture and dimension. I’m drawn to the lilacs at the top left. Their soft, delicate purple contrasts beautifully with the fiery reds and yellows of the tulips. It’s like Corinth is staging a conversation between different temperaments of colour. The way he handles the paint, thick and loaded, reminds me of Courbet. Painting, for Corinth, seems like a form of embodied expression, a way of feeling and thinking through the world. And that kind of generosity is passed down to us, across time.