Das Soldatenbad (Artillerymen)

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner painted Das Soldatenbad, also titled Artillerymen, in 1915. The oil on canvas measures 140 by 150 centimetres. It shows lean, unclothed young soldiers, their faces like masks, packed into a shower hall with a low ceiling while a uniformed superior looks on. In the foreground one man crouches to tend the fire that warms the water.

The provenance records that Alfred Flechtheim of Düsseldorf acquired the work in 1919. The Städtisches Kunstmuseum in Düsseldorf received it as a donation in 1928-29, and Flechtheim regained it by exchange in 1930. When Flechtheim left Germany in 1933 he left the painting with his niece, Rosi Hulisch. Kurt Feldhäusser of Berlin acquired it in 1938, and in 1945 it passed by inheritance to his mother, Marie Luise Feldhäusser.

The Weyhe Gallery in New York acquired it in 1949. Mr. and Mrs. Morton D. May of St. Louis owned it by 1952 and gave it to the Museum of Modern Art in 1956. The Guggenheim Museum obtained it by exchange in 1988.

In 2018 the Guggenheim restituted the painting to the heirs of Alfred Flechtheim. Sotheby's offered it in New York on 12 November 2018 as lot 22, with an estimate of $15 million to $20 million. Sotheby's reports that it sold for $22 million.