Porträt des Malers Bublitz

Lovis Corinth's Porträt des Malers Bublitz (Portrait of the Painter Bublitz, 1889) is a portrait of an otherwise obscure painter — possibly a colleague or student contemporary from his Königsberg or early Munich period. Portraits of fellow painters carry a specific quality in the late nineteenth century: the shared professional world creating a more relaxed, direct encounter than formal society portraiture. Corinth was adept at capturing the specific quality of artistic temperament in his artist-colleague portraits.

The portrait of Bublitz shows Corinth's developing maturity: the confident brushwork of a painter who has assimilated his academic training and begun moving beyond it. His treatment of a fellow artist allows the directness he valued — the painter's eye meeting another painter's eye without social performance. His palette is warm and direct, the face modeled with the psychological observation that was becoming his portrait signature.