Queer Places:
Charlotte
Berend-Corinth (25 May 1880 – 10 January 1967) was a female
German
painter and artist in the
Berliner Secession. She was married to German painter
Lovis Corinth. Beginning in 1919, Charlotte drew character studies of
various Berlin actors and actresses, including
Valeska Gert (1892-1978);
Anita
Berber (1899-1928); and Fritzi Massary (1882-1969). An undated portfolio of
nine characters played by Massary’s husband Max Pallenberg (1877-1934) was
probably completed in the early 1920s.
Anita Berber by Charlotte
Berend-Corinth
Valeska Gert by Charlotte
Berend-Corinth
Charlotte Berend studied
fine arts
at the
Royal School of Art in Berlin and the
Berliner Kunstgewerbemuseum, taught by Eva Stort and Max Schäfer. In 1901,
she was the first student at the private art school of
Lovis Corinth, who fell in love with her. She became his model for a
number of paintings, including Portrait of Charlotte Berend in a White
Dress. On 26 March 1903, she married Corinth and
changed her name to Berend-Corinth. On 13 October the same year their son
Thomas Corinth was born, and their daughter Wilhelmine Corinth was born on 13
June 1909.
Berend-Corinth began exhibiting her paintings at the Berliner Secession in
1906. She joined the Secession in 1912 and did not leave it after the
separation of the new
Freie Secession led by
Max Liebermann when Lovis Corinth became its new leader. She painted book
illustrations for
Max Pallenberg,
Fritzi Massary, and
Valeska Gert and painted portraits of
Michael Bohnen,
Werner Krauss,
Paul
Bildt and
Paul
Graetz. In the 1920s she supported young artists from the theatres in
Berlin. In 1919 Lovis Corinth bought a house in
Urfeld at
Walchensee where he and his wife could retire from their life in Berlin.
It was here, in her lakeside home at Urfeld, where she painted landscapes,
portraits and still lifes and more and more retired from the active arts
scene. Her husband died in 1925 from
pneumonia
during a journey to the Netherlands.
Berend-Corinth emigrated in 1933 to the
United States of America, where her son Thomas was already living in
New York City. In 1958 she published a book of the complete paintings of
Lovis Corinth, which became a standard work and is in use today in a 1992
edition from
Béatrice Hernad.
Berendt-Corinth died in 1967.
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