"The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) has added a treasured work with a troubled provenance into its collection. Im Bett liegender Mann (Selbstbildnis) (Man Lying in Bed [Self-Portrait], 1917-18), a watercolour by the German Expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, has been donated to the museum's Ludwig and Rosy Fischer Collection by descendants of the Fischer family after it was voluntarily restituted to them earlier this year by its former owners, Annemarie and Günther Gercken."
"The couple's sons, Ernst and Max, inherited their collection of around 500 works in 1926. In 1933, Adolf Hitler passed the Law for the Restoration of Professional Civil Servants, barring "non-Aryans" from positions in the German government and causing Ernst Fischer to lose his position at the University of Frankfurt. He fled Germany with his family and his half of the art collection in 1934, settling in Richmond, Virginia."
Im Bett liegender Mann (Selbstbildnis) (Man Lying in Bed, 1917–18), a watercolour by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, was donated to the VMFA’s Ludwig and Rosy Fischer Collection by Fischer descendants after voluntary restitution by former owners Annemarie and Günther Gercken. The Fischers were eminent Frankfurt collectors of German Expressionism, especially Die Brücke artists; their sons Ernst and Max inherited about 500 works in 1926. Nazi laws in 1933 forced Ernst from his university post; he fled in 1934 with his family and half the collection to Richmond, Virginia, while Max left later and could not take his share. VMFA acquired the Fischer collection in 2009 via a gift-purchase agreement with Anne Fischer, and Im Bett liegender Mann is the fourth work returned to the Fischer Collection since 2015.
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