Flowers

"Flowers" from 1890 on pastel captures a moment in Corinth's career before his Berlin fame, when he was still establishing himself after returning from Paris and Munich academic training. Pastel was a medium associated with Impressionism — Degas and Cassatt had elevated it to a vehicle for serious artistic statement — and Corinth's use of it in 1890 reflects his awareness of French practice even as he remained rooted in German Naturalist tradition. Still-life flower subjects in pastel offered an opportunity to explore color relationships and mark-making without the structural demands of academic figure painting. This work's presence in the Ernest Zmeták Art Gallery in Slovakia reflects the distribution of Central European art across what were once Habsburg-connected collecting networks.

Pastel allows color to be applied as pure pigment with no binding medium to alter its optical quality, producing an immediacy and luminosity distinct from oil. Corinth's 1890 pastel likely shows confident, directional strokes building petal forms through overlapping color rather than blending. The ground (paper or card) contributes to the final color effect wherever it shows through.