Dr. phil. Wolfgang Baumann
ANTIQUITÄTEN UND KUNSTHANDLUNG
gegr. 1909


 

Marcel René von Herrfeldt (1889-1965)
Erotic female act in the boudoir,
Munich 1920/30

Oil on canvas, right below signed "Herrfeldt",
original frame,
Höhe 110,5 cm; Breite 136,5 cm,

On a brown fur lies the lady only dressed with red and shoes and looks to the one who looks at the picture. On the left there is a paravant which showes two mythological and erotic scenes from the baroque time. Behind the lady there are a table with lamp and an upholstered clubchaire, which show that the scene plays in the 30ies of the twentieth century.

Francois Boucher, The resting girl 1752, illustration upside down

Herrfeld quotes famous works of art as the cmparison with the resting girl from F. Boucher showes. It can be seen in the Old Pinacothec in Munich since 1909. The position of the act Herrfeldt adopts from Boucher upside down.
This type the painter has also used for the female act in the front of a picture with two women on the beach with raging waves (ZELLER, s.u. Abb. 30).

Marcel von Herrfeld born in 1880 was a son from Alice Herrfeldt and the Spanish act-painter Luis Ricardo Falero (1851-1896) who worked at Paris. Alice Herrfelt had painting lessons at the spanish painter. In the year of birth of her son Marcel René Alice Herrfeldt married the hungarian opera singer Alexander Klein. In Munich Marcel went to school and began in the epoche of Art Nouveau a education at the Kunstgewerbeschule München. Later he is supposed to have been at the art`s academie of Munich but his name cannot be found in the archives there. As an austrian-hungarian officer of reserve he had to take part in the first worldwar, was captured in Russia, was sent to prison in Sibiria and escaped adventurous over China and India to Munich.

The works of the famous painter Franz von Stuck in Munich influenced the young Herrfeldt. Successfull was his first exhibition in 1921 in the Glaspalace of Munich. He showed there the act of the femal slave and therefore he attracted attention. His studio was in Schwabing. His favorit subject to paint finaly was the erotic femal act, which he didn´t paint in an academically aesthetically way but anticipated idealizing the pin-up-culture of painting. His women are athletic and selfconfident figures who present themselves at seashore or like here in a classical pose of the Rokoko in the historical surroundings of a boudoir. Herrfeldt died 1965 in Munich. Posthum he got the Diplom d´honneur" 1971.

This big painting is in a perfect and authentically condition and has never been restored.

Lit.: Münchner Maler, Bd. 5, 1993, S. 382f. (Alexander Rauch); Renate Möller, Dieter Weidmann: Erotica. München, Berlin 1998, Titelbild, S. 57 f. : Abb. 31 – 33. Klaus Robert ZELLER, Die Sammlung MRH, Werke des Malers der Frauenschönheit Marcel René von Herrfeldt (1889-1965), Zürich 2000, vgl. Abb. 30.

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