Im blauen Mantel - Die Malerin und Madeleine (In a blue coat - The Painter and Madeleine) 

With her participation in the 1928 spring exhibition of the Preußische Akademie der Künste (The Prussian Academy of Arts), Lotte Laserstein entered the energetic and lively art scene of Berlin. At this point Laserstein was in her late twenties and had completed her artistic training in the German capital.

It was around this time that she started taking an interest in the compositional dynamic that was to be found in a particular kind of intimate double portrait executed against the background of the artist’s studio. One early example is Two Girls(1927, oil on canvas, 95 x 56 cm, private collection), where a young girl peers curiously over the shoulder of her friend who, brush in hand, is working at the easel.

This genre would soon develop into the kind of compositions which now form much of the basis for Laserstein’s popularity amongst museums and collectors alike. In this second phase Laserstein began to include herself in the compositions, thus turning the portraits into self-portraits where the artist is accompanied by especially favoured, and much liked, models.

Some excellent examples of the above are to be found in early masterpieces like In My Studio (1928, oil on panel, 46 x 73 cm, private collection) and At the Mirror (1930/1931, oil on canvas, 124.5 x 88.8 cm, The Bute Collection at Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute, Scotland, United Kingdom). Both paintings depict her favourite model and potential lover (although this has never, despite several attempts by scholars, been definitively proven), Traute Rose (Gertrud Rose, 1903-1989, German painter and photographer).

If the paintings mentioned above can be considered to be surrounded by a kind of voyeuristic ambivalence, a painting such as I and My Model (1929/1930, oil on canvas, 49.5 x 69.5 cm, The Bute Collection at Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute, Scotland, United Kingdom) rather conveys a well-balanced and subtle feeling of sensuality and intimacy. In Lotte Laserstein Face to Face (Ed. Alexander Eiling & Elena Schroll, exhibition catalogue, Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Mein, Germany, in collaboration with the Berlinische Galerie, 2018), the catalogue (written by Valentina Bay, Alexander Eiling and Elena Schroll) includes the following passage:

Her friend Traute Rose became Lotte Laserstein’s muse and an important figure in her life already during her years at the academy. In a number of self-portraits, she depicted herself together with the young woman. I and My Model pictures the artist and Rose close together during a portrait sitting. Laserstein appears to be in the process of creating a double portrait of herself and her friend. However, only the canvas at the left edge and the palette and brush in her hand establish this context. Whereas Rose gazes at the work in progress, Laserstein turns with an alert stare toward the viewer, who appears to have disrupted the intimacy between the two. Their physical closeness symbolises their close relationship as well as Rose’s importance in Laserstein’s oeuvre. In her double portraits, the artist moves away from the traditional painter-model hierarchy in favour of a sensitive togetherness that gives both an artistic share in the painting’s creation. In this sense, Laserstein’s double portraits are linked to the Romantic genre of friendship pictures and, thus, to German art of the early nineteenth century, which experienced a revival in the late 1920s.

The importance (‘it meant something special to Lotte’) of I and My Model was later validated by Laserstein’s friend Peter Fors (who got to know the exiled and ageing artist in Kalmar, Sweden, a few years before her international breakthrough in London in 1987): ‘It did not hang prominently in the large room, but rather more privately in the dining room’ (Peter Fors, Min vän Lotte, 2023).

The intimate friendship with Traute Rose would come to an abrupt end when Laserstein (forced to do so by her persecution from the Nazis) fled to Sweden in 1937. Her new life as a refugee in Sweden was marked by various difficulties. In addition to feeling powerless in the face of developments in Germany, Laserstein also struggled with feelings of alienation in her new homeland, while her livelihood as an artist was a recurring problem. The latter problem,however, could be partially remedied by painting commissioned portraits, something that Laserstein reluctantly undertook with mixed feelings. Iris Müller-Westermann, PhD (born 1955, director of Moderna Museet Malmö, Malmö, Sweden), writes (in ‘Lotte Laserstein - ett delat liv: Nystart i Sverige’, article in [Ed.] Iris Müller-Westermann & Anna-Carola Krausse, Lotte Laserstein. Ett delat liv, exhibition catalogue, Moderna Museet, Malmö/Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2023):

Although the portraits were essential for her livelihood, Laserstein found many of them restrictive, as they did not allow her sufficient artistic freedom. The clients’ wishes often focused primarily on portrait likeness, and those depicted wanted to appear more attractive and flawless than they probably were in reality. Laserstein felt stifled and degraded to a mere craftsperson.

Anna-Carola Krausse, PhD (born 1962, Berlin-based art historian whose doctoral thesis, Lotte Laserstein. Leben und Werk, from 2006, laid the foundation for scholarship about the artist), also writes (in ‘Constructed Gazes, Staged Realities. Lotte Laserstein’s Reinterpretation of Iconographic Models’, article in [Ed.] Alexander Eiling & Elena Schroll, Lotte Laserstein Face to Face, exhibition catalogue, Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Mein, Germany in collaboration with the Berlinische Galerie, 2018): ‘Beginning in the mid-1940s, she suffered an artistic crisis lasting several years. Commissioned work - “painting to order”, as she called it - which secured her livelihood, had worn her out, and gnawed away at her creative imagination and at her self-confidence as an artist.’

There were exceptions, however. In 1947, around the time when Laserstein had managed to re-establish contact with Traute Rose back in Germany, Laserstein executed The Painter and Madeleine at the Easel (private collection, United Kingdom). The painting depicted Laserstein and her new model, Madeleine (Margarete Jaraczewsky, a German refugee whom Laserstein met in 1939), who would become a close friend and model for many years to come. These two events (her friendship with Madeleine and her renewed contact with Traute) influenced Laserstein’s artistry in a specific direction. Now in exile, she began to reconnect with her earlier compositions from Berlin. Krausse writes:

As if she wanted to paint her erstwhile power back into existence, she repeatedly drew on old ideas for paintings and earlier compositional models during this period, as can be seen in the double portrait The Painter and Madeleine at the Easel. […] As with I and My Model, in the double portrait with Madeleine, the model’s gaze is directed at the painting being created while the artist, situated between the easel and friend, looks out of the painting. However, in this version, it is not the process of creation itself which is depicted but rather a respite from work. The former intimacy, closeness and erotically charged dynamism have yielded to a certain routineness, exhaustion and listlessness. The artist presents herself far less high-spirited than during her Berlin years. Her position behind her model, as if seeking protection, corresponds with her questioning, even somewhat timid facial expression. Even Laserstein’s hand on Madeleine’s shoulder, with which she quotes the gesture that dominates the painting I and My Model in a reversal of roles, has lost its tender connotation. In fact, it appears that the once so self-confident artist is here to allow herself to be guided. With the reinterpretation of the candid Berlin painting, the painter succeeds in creating an impressive rendering of her desolate state after a decade in Swedish exile.

Laserstein’s psychologically penetrating self-portraits during these years in exile would become numerous, and Madeleine would contribute her share to some of the most significant ones. In 1950 Laserstein painted Im blauen Mantel - Die Malerin und Madeleine (In a blue coat - The Painter and Madeleine), where the two women, once again, pose together, in what Iris Müller-Westermann describes as ‘a magnificent painting and one of the few self-portraits in which she does not portray herself as a practising artist’, before she continues (in ‘Lotte Laserstein - ett delat liv: Nystart i Sverige’ [Ed.] Iris Müller-Westermann & Anna-Carola Krausse, Lotte Laserstein. Ett delat liv, exhibition catalogue, Moderna Museet, Malmö/Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2023:

She is dressed in a blue winter coat and appears to be on her way somewhere. Here, as so often, Laserstein works with the direction of the gaze. Madeleine, wearing a coat and hat, looks at Laserstein, and Laserstein looks at us. The model turns carefully towards the artist. She places her hands around Laserstein, who sits powerless on a chair, her gaze turned towards the viewer. The image exudes both thoughtfulness and resignation and seems to convey Laserstein’s experience of her life in exile in the early 1950s. […] Laserstein is not alone in her self- portrait, and yet she is completely alone. Once again, she dares to face herself as a person who lacks answers, who lives in uncertainty – a heavy and, at the moment, hardly joyful life.

Westermann’s words echo those of Krausse, who wrote the following in her 2006 doctoral thesis about Laserstein:

Grief and inner brokenness are expressed even more clearly in the double portrait Im Blauen Mantel – Die Malerin und Madeleine (In the Blue Cloak – The Painter and Madeleine), created in 1950, which also works with allusions to Ich und mein Modell (I and My Model). Next to Madeleine in her costume with a large hat, the once so present painter appears vulnerable and helpless in her dressing gown-like clothing, almost exposed. Her hands no longer hold a brush but lie limply in her lap. Laserstein’s facial features and posture reflect insecurity and emotional trauma; the painter appears old and tired. Her once compelling gaze now reaches the viewer only through a veil.

Signed and dated (upper left corner): ‘Lotte Laserstein 1950’.

Provenance

Private collection (acquired directly from the artist).

Bukowski’s, Stockholm, sale 665, Important Spring Sale, 12 June 2025, lot 547.

Firestorm Foundation (acquired at the above sale).

Literature

Anna-Carola Krausse, ‘“Malen fürs Lebensbrot”. Zum Verlust künstlerischer Identität in der Emigration: Die Malerin Lotte Laserstein im schwedischen Exil’, article in Sprache – Identität – Kultur. Exilforschung – Ein internationales Jabruch, 1999, p. 106-126, illustrated p. 120.

Anna-Carola Krausse, Lotte Laserstein (1898–1993). Leben und Werk, 2006, mentioned p. 298 (under the title Im blauen Mantel - Die Malerin und Madeleine), also catalogued and illustrated (under the title Im blauen Mantel - Die Malerin und Madeleine), in accompanying CD (‘Werkverzeichnis’), under the section ‘Werkliste Schweden. Repräsentative Auswahl der ab 1938 in Schweden Gemälde, Zeichnungen und Druckgraphiken’ (List of works in Sweden. Representative selection of paintings, drawings and prints created in Sweden from 1938 onwards).

Anna-Carola Krausse, Lotte Laserstein. Meine einzige Wirklichkeit, 2022, mentioned p. 191 and illustrated full page in colour, p. 192 (under the title Im blauen Mantel - Die Malerin und Madeleine).

(Ed.) Iris Müller-Westermann & Anna-Carola Krausse, Lotte Laserstein. Ett delat liv, exhibition catalogue, Moderna Museet, Malmö/Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2023, mentioned p. 129 and illustrated in colour p. 128.

Copyright Firestorm Foundation