Dr. Moeller & Cie Kunsthandel

After Lovis Corinth opened his private painting school for women in Berlin in 1901, the young Charlotte Berend (Berlin 1880 - 1967 New York) enrolled as one of the first students. She had already begun her studies in 1898 at the state art school in the Klosterstraße and at Berlin’s museum for applied art. Corinth soon found a muse in her, chose her as his favourite model, and proposed to her two years later. Despite giving birth to two children, Charlotte Behrend resolutely continued her own activity as painter, regularly exhibiting with the Berlin Secession and publishing portfolios of her lithographs. However, after her husband’s stroke in 1911, she interrupted her work to devote herself entirely to Corinth’s care (Fig.1).

Corith first discovered the Bavarian town of Bernried in 1892, when he and other Munich artist friends from the Freie Vereinigung (“Free Union”) sought a location for plein air painting. It would later become the idyllic site of the young family’s holidays, until Corinth had his own house built on Lake Walchen in 1919.