The Visitation Dinner, illustration for The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Lovis CorinthWW-1902-123549

1902·Brush and black ink, gray wash, and white gouache, with graphite, on white wove paper·25.1 × 34.4 cm (9 15/16 × 13 9/16 in.)

This drawing, reproduced in the 1908 edition of the English writer Laurence Sterne’s novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, highlights Corinth’s use of satire to comment on both religion and human folly. Here, the title character, who was mistakenly baptized with the name Tristram, wishes to see if it can be changed. Just as the debate begins, a hot chestnut falls into the lap of the man in profile on the right. His mouth opens in pain, as his right hand grips the back of his chair, with a slapstick humor that seems to emulate the work of the English artist William Hogarth.

Catalogue

Year: 1902
Medium: Brush and black ink, gray wash, and white gouache, with graphite, on white wove paper
Dimensions: 25.1 × 34.4 cm (9 15/16 × 13 9/16 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Lovis Corinth

Artist

Lovis Corinth

Painting

Lovis Corinth was a German painter and printmaker whose bold, expressionistic brushwork and dark palette anticipated modernism while remaining rooted in figuration. Active in Berlin from the 1890s onward, he painted portraits, still lifes, and mythological scenes with increasingly gestural intensity.

Zandvoort, Netherlands

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