Dear Friends,

I’m delighted to share with you a very special series of sunset drawings that Lyonel Feininger (1871–1956) made during his summer sojourns in the fishing village of Deep (now Mrze?yno) at the mouth of the Rega river on the Baltic Sea.

Feininger visited Deep for the first time in 1924, and was immediately captivated. He would return every year until 1935. As he wrote to his wife, Julia, upon first arriving in Deep: “The sea is so beautiful and so quiet as I have never seen it before—no traffic in sight, not even rowing or fishing boats.”

Feininger became particularly enchanted with the sunsets over the sea. He went to the beach to watch them every day, noting how no two were alike. He described them in enthusiastic letters to Julia—writing of a silver-toned sunset with the “sky full of soft fog clouds” and of “marvelous clouds…concentrated, moving, swept by the storm over the inland; behind those radial ascending cirrus [clouds] with outrageously delicate hues, pink on apple and plum-blue sky background”—and captured them in drawings in crayon and pencil on paper.

I’m pleased to display eleven of these exceptional drawings, made during Feininger’s final two summers in Deep (1934 and 1935), in our latest viewing room.

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