Self Portrait with a Cat by Lotte Laserstein

Art work details

Original Title :

Selbstportrait mit Katze

Year of production :

1928

Artist:

Lotte Laserstein

Medium :

Oil painting

Materials:

Oil paint, Plywood panel

Dimensions :

height: 61 cms; width: 51 cms

Credit Line :

Purchased from the artist through Thos. Agnew and Sons Ltd

Copyright :

© DACS 2021

Tags:

Weimar Republic, Animals, Self Portrait, Laserstein

Laserstein depicts herself completely objectively in her Berlin studio as an emancipated woman and professional artist, aware of her individuality and unconcerned by her unconventional appearance. Her half-turned figure recalls the portraits of Hans Holbein the Younger whose work she admired. Like him too, she delights in representing a variety of natural textures such as the folds of her cotton smock and the glossy fur of the cat.

In 1921 Laserstein studied at the Berlin Academy and was influenced by the realist paintings of Adolf von Menzel and Wilhelm Leibl. She set up her own studio in Berlin in 1927. Laserstein identified her work with the Northern European tradition in art with its rigorous fidelity to nature and combines naturalistic observation with a sympathetic psychological analysis of her sitters.