I'm pleased to present a new viewing room highlighting portraits of Julia Feininger (1880–1970) by two artists: her husband, Lyonel Feininger (1871–1956) and the couple’s friend, Otto Dix (1891–1969).

When Dix made his watercolor of Julia in profile in 1922, he was beginning to establish himself as the most ruthless portraitist of the Weimar Republic. Haunted by the horrors he experienced as a soldier in World War I, and disillusioned in its aftermath by an unstable society marked by rampant social inequality and volatile politics, he developed a harshly realistic figurative style aimed at exposing the hypocrisies of contemporary life.

With Julia as his subject, however, Dix softened. In his portrait of her, she appears self-possessed, her smiling eyes indicating kindness and ease. Dix and the Feiningers likely had known each other since 1918, when he and Lyonel were members of the progressive artist associations the November Group and, later, the Dresden Secession. The tenderness with which Dix portrayed Julia suggests mutual respect and friendship.

Feininger often portrayed his wife, who was an artist in her own right. From 1913 to 1927, he depicted his beloved Julia in seven portraits in oil on canvas and numerous drawings. In our viewing room, I am pleased to feature six portraits of Julia that Feininger made between 1908 and 1913. They range from quick studies, showing her absorbed in a newspaper or fixing her hair, to more elaborately executed works on paper showing her in profile, possibly in preparation for a painting like Portrait Study of Julia, 1913, or Woman’s Head, 1916.

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