Saturday solitude embodied in a fiery hued 1926 portrait of Sylvia von Harden by Otto Dix. The German painter was known for his vivid, harshly candid approach to painting, in line with his association with the idealism-shunning Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) artists’ group. Von Harden, meanwhile, was a journalist and New Woman, who would later recount how Dix stopped her in the street declaring, “I must paint you! I simply must! … You are representative of an entire epoch!” The result was this wonderfully atmospheric painting of the writer in a chequered dress, sitting, smoking and drinking, lost in thought.
