Tuesday, JuLy 22, 2008 - John Moran Auctioneers

1109 Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956 New york, Ny/Germany)
“Die Teufelssonate”, signed and dated upper right: Feininger 08, ink on paper
under glass, image size: 13.5’’ x 12.75’’, est:$20,000/30,000. Literature: Berliner
Illustrirte Zeitung, 19 February 1911, illustrated on the cover. Note: This 1908 drawing
demonstrates a pivotal shift in Lyonel Feininger’s artistic career. Between 1906 and
1908, Feininger transformed himself from a master caricaturist into an exemplary
painter. Working in Berlin and Paris, he was greatly influenced by his French peers
and tried to suppress his affinity for cartooning and illustration just when he had
reached the pinnacle of his career in these fields. The verticality and attenuated
forms in the drawing are adaptations of certain elements of the Art Nouveau
movement which just a few years later he would amplify to greater extremes.
The subject matter is autobiographical, with something of a psychological twist.
Feininger’s parents, both musicians, impressed upon their son their belief in the
superiority of music over applied and fine arts. According to a 1905 letter excerpt
published in E. Scheyer, ‘’Lyonel Feininger: Caricature and Fantasy’’, Detroit, MI,
1964, p. 13, ‘’I remember so well: When I was a very small boy, four or five years
old, in New York, we lived in a three story house all by ourselves: I used to sit in the
dusk in the big dining room in the basement. The large stove gave heat also to the
music room above. The register of the stove was open for me so that I might hear
the better - than there I was - perfectly entranced, while my parents were playing,
my father the violin, my mother accompanying him on the piano, music by Bach,
Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Schubert. Waves of delight went through me
- I believe nobody ever had an idea what was happening with me: later anyhow my
father didn’t consider me to be deeply musical. But maybe my inclination for technical
constructions, which then had the upper hand, was not very favorably looked upon
by my father, I tinkered too much for his taste - he didn’t like it, that I was able to drive
pins so straightly into the wooden models which I was building all the time - miniature
ships, locomotives and such - he seemed to think that this precluded all feeling for
art.’’
Feininger’s parents traveled together extensively on musical tours and he and his
siblings were left with relatives and family friends for long periods of time, resulting
in feelings of despair and isolation. ‘’In moments of loneliness ‘he imagined faces
lurking in the moving shadows’ under the elevated [train] and was haunted by “ghostlike
apparitions and forms not of this world.’’ (ibid, p.19).
The Devil’s Sonata, or Devil’s Trill Sonata (Il trillo del diavolo) was composed by
Venetian violinist Giuseppe Tartini (1692-1770). The story goes that Tartini one night
dreamt that the devil appeared at the foot of his bed, asking to be his student. Tartini
proceeded to play his violin and at the end of his instruction, he handed the devil
his instrument to test his skill. The devil began to play with such virtuosity a sontata
so beautiful, complicated and technical that Tartini immediately awoke with a gasp
and attempted to play what he had just heard in his dream. He transcribed the
composition as best as he could remember it but claimed it fell far short of what
the devil played for him. As he told the French astronomer Jerome Lalande, who
recorded the story in his ‘Voyage d’un francois en Italie’, 1769, ‘’The piece I then
composed is without doubt my best, the Devil’s Sonata, but it falls so far short of the
one that stunned me that I would have smashed my violin and given up music forever
if I could but possess it’’.
The theme of the looming violinist recurred in Feininger’s later oeuvre, as in ‘’The
Virtuoso’’, circa 1920 and ‘’Der rote Geiger’’ of 1934.
Together with original cover page from Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung with the present
work illustrated.
This work will be included in the Lyonel Feininger archives of drawings and
watercolors, certificate number 220-5-3-08. Provenance: Acquired in Germany no
later than the 1930s, by descent in the family to the present owner; Property from the
Marianne J. Knox Trust, Los Angeles, CA Condition: Visual: The drawing in generally
good condition. Two small tears along the upper edge, 0.5’’ and 0.25’’, a 0.5’’ tear
with tape backing it along the upper left edge and a 0.25” tear along the right center
edge. Paper is slightly rippled. Paper margins are toned and stained and with tears
throughout and missing paper to the edges. Newspaper clipping is mounted to a nonarchival
board and is heavily toned.
26