Great Paintings: Evening Over Potsdam by Lotte Laserstein
A melancholy masterpiece by a little-known female artist of Weimar Germany
Lotte Laserstein was a German painter who lived through the Weimar years as an independent artist in Berlin. Her great masterpiece, among many accomplished paintings, was Evening Over Potsdam painted around 1928.
It is a depiction of a group of friends on a roof terrace overlooking the city of Potsdam. It shows the remnants of a luncheon party; each figure is captured in a pensive mood, a cosmopolitan array of characters cut through with personal ennui and melancholy. Most of the models were friends of the artist. The woman on the far left, Traute Rose, was a life-long friend and Laserstein’s favourite model. She gave this account about the making of the painting and the placing of the models:
“My position on the outside left in front of the railing was decided upon, as well as my husband’s position with the dog at his feet. The figure in the pullover in the middle of the picture was another girl at first, but she did not last out and was replaced by the girl in the yellow pullover. […] (My husband) Ernst had the most difficult pose as it was hard to hold the position of the propped arm and tilted head. The dog was replaced by a fur skin because he didn’t like Ernst’s feet. The models had their hearts and souls in the job because they knew that Lotte was creating a great work.” (Traute Rose)
Laserstein was born in 1898. It is hard not to be impressed by her decision, at the age of eleven, to never marry and to become a painter instead. She kept her word, later arguing that forgoing marriage was a necessary choice for maintaining her independence as an artist. She was one of only a small number of females admitted to the Berlin Academy of Arts during the Weimar period. Further, she won its gold medal in 1925, and for the last two years of her training became the star pupil (Atelier Meisterschüler) of her teacher Erich Wolfsfeld, an honour that entitled her to her own studio. After leaving the academy she set up a private studio in Berlin where she painted and taught students. She exhibited widely across Germany and showed three paintings at the 1937 Paris World’s Fair. Later, she was forced to leave Germany being one-quarter…
