Nackte Frau Mit Hut

Nackte Frau mit Hut (Standing Nude with a Hat)

By Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Nackte Frau mit Hut was painted in 1907 by the German expressionist painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner who was one of the founders of Die Brücke. The tableau is made with oil on canvas and has a size of 195x69 cm. To-day it is placed in the Städische Galerie in the Städelisches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main.

As the title tells, the focus in this painting is on a nude woman wearing nothing but a hat, jewellery and shoes. The woman's skin is rather pale and she is standing in the front and almost in the centre of the painting. She is wearing red, flat shoes, a bracelet around her left arm, a necklace, earrings and a black, big hat. Her lips are red and her eyes are made up. She has her right hand laid in her left hand almost at the height of her breast. The background is coloured, wild patterned and seems to refer-ence to ‘primitive' values that fit in the expressionists ideology of that time.

The confidently and somehow easy way she is standing there and looking towards the viewer indicates that she is absolutely comfortable with the fact that she is nude and everyone can watch her. In my eyes her look even has something challenging and provocative as if she was trying to embarrass the (bourgeois) viewer with her nudity. Although she is dressed lightly, what she is wearing still has this sophisticated, bourgeois touch that theoretically is opposed to her nudity but effectively works well with it.

Moreover, it seems that she has a sense for fashion. Her hat and shoes are fashionable and her pubic hair is shaped to a triangle. This way of shav-ing one's pubic hair used to be common at that time in the scene of danc-ers.

Lucas Cranach's Venus of 1532, painted with oil on wood where a nude woman barely adorned with jewellery in front of a black background is