Portrait Elisabeth Hembus. 1930.
Black Chalk drawing.
Lower right signed and dated. With the estate stamp (Lugt 1570b) and the hand-written number "K Da/Ba 9a" on the reverse. On firm smooth paper. 92.5 x 67 cm (36.4 x 26.3 in), size of sheet.

• The work shows Elisabeth Hembus, wife of the musician Julius Hembus, who lived near Kirchner and his partner in Davos.
• The Hembus couple sat model several photographs, drawings, paintings and prints as of 1930.
• The year this work was made, E. L. Kirchner also created the impressive painting "Blonde Frau in rotem Kleid, Portrait Elisabeth Hembus" (Gordon 964).
• A color woodcut that shows Elisabeth Hembus and her husband in an intimate embrace is at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main.

The work is registered in the Hermann Gerlinger Collection with the number SHG 804 a.

PROVENANCE: Hermann Gerlinger Collection, Würzburg (with the collector's stamp, Lugt 6032).

EXHIBITION: Kunstmuseum Moritzburg, Halle an der Saale (permanent loan from the Hermann Gerlinger Collection, 2001-2017).
Buchheim Museum, Bernried (permanent loan from the Hermann Gerlinger Collection, 2017-2022).

"The Hembusses just left, they send their regards. [..] You absolutely won her heart, she keeps asking for you and looks at your picture whenever she is over. She is such a boisterous yet modest person and was quite a neglected child."
E. L. Kirchner in a letter to Erna Schilling from December 14, 1931, Kirchner Archive E. W. Kornfeld, Bern/Davos, quoted from: Wolfgang Henze, Breifwechsel 1910-1935/38, Stuttgart 1990, letter no. 2605.

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