Two and Early Hour - Paintings Linked by Inspiration

Some of us are inspired to create poetry after we see a painting or a sculpture. Others of us use the image of another artist to create an image of our own. That is what Katie m. Berggren did in today's image, Two. As she writes on her website...

"I had this drawing completed when a friend sent me an image of Karl Hofer's painting "Early Hour" (I can't find it online). Hofer's image inspired me to work my drawing into a painting. In the end, I am pleased with how the socks on the floor draw some of the attention away from the couple on the bed."

The inspiration to write this post came to me earlier this morning. Still under the duvet and with my head on my pillow, I remembered how seeing Hofer's Early Hour had compelled me to search out more references to it. Katie Berggren's image as well as Micah Sunshower's Myspace page (Early Hour is included as one of his images) became linked during that research period. My eyes had immediately gone to Berggren's painting on the Google image page. A couple in bed, these two are in the sleep dance embrace. Together yet separate, they move in that other world we go to each day. On the other hand, in Hofer's, the man is almost a viewer, part of the scene yet removed. This separation between the man and woman made me wonder what was happening to Hofer when he painted Early Hour.

Early Hour was painted in 1935, a year after two major upheavals in Karl Hofer's life. As a result of the rise of Fascism in Germany, Hofer had been dismissed from his teaching post as a professor at the Kunstschule in Berlin-Charlottenburg in 1934. The other pivotal event in 1934 was his separation and divorce from his wife, Mathilde. Mathilde Scheinberger was a Jewish singer when they had married in 1903.

During my own early hour, I began putting stories together. Early Hour was Hofer remembering better times with his former wife. Early Hour was Hofer with a different woman, together with her but still very much part of his former life. Or maybe Early Hour was a couple Hofer had seen as he walked past a room. Perhaps only the dog at the foot of the bed really knows for certain.