Head of a Girl
Artist
Wilhelm Lehmbruck
German, 1881–1919
Datecirca 1913–1914
MediumPlaster, cast and painted
Dimensions17 ½ x 13 ½ x 9 ¾ in. (44.4 x 34.2 x 24.8 cm)
ClassificationsSculpture
Credit LineBequest of W. R. Valentiner
Object numberG.65.10.42
On View
On viewThis sculpture reflects the woman's-and the artist's-inner life. Though the relatively smooth surface of the plaster is somewhat at odds with the aggressive brush strokes of German Expressionist paintings, the sculpture shares with those works the same mission: to express the subjective. Descriptive details are subordinated to a pronounced spiritualization of form.
The quiet and intensely melancholy subject of this work, like most of Wilhelm Lehmbruck's female figures, is based on the artist's wife. An air of vulnerability envelopes the delicate figure whose serene nobility nonetheless projects a certain resignation and resilience. Head of a Woman testifies to Lehmbruck's meditative spirit. Contemplative and often depressed, he expressed in plaster and bronze his unfulfilled yearning for a life of harmony and perfection.
ProvenanceW. R. Valentiner, Detroit, MI, by ca. 1933 [1]; Valentiner Estate, Raleigh, NC, 1958 [4]; to NCMA, by bequest, 1965.
[1] Detroit inventory, ca. 1933 (Lehmbruck, portrait study). See note in curatorial file.
[2] Only one Lehmbruck listed on estate inventory: L.58.12.23-VE "Head study for head of kneeling female," plaster, 17 in. high.
Published ReferencesMasterpieces of Art: In Memory of William R. Valentiner, 1880-1958 (exhibition catalogue) (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1959), cat. no. 167, illus. (b-w) 233, fig. 167.
The Art Quarterly 17, no. 2 (Summer 1963), 275.
"Acquisitions: The Valentiner Bequest," North Carolina Museum of Art Bulletin 6, no. 4 and 7, no. 1 (1966/67?), mentioned 10, listed 79, illus. (b-w) 58, fig. 18.
Edgar Peters Bowron, ed., Introduction to the Collections (Chapel Hill: published for the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, by The University of North Carolina Press, 1983), illus. (b-w) 264.
North Carolina Museum of Art Bulletin 17 (1997), listed and illus. (b-w) 93.
Dietrich Schubert, Wilhelm Lehmbruck: Catalogue Raisonné der Skulpturen 1898-1919 (Worms: Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, 2001), illus. 272.
Julia Freifeld, "As I See It," North Carolina Museum of Art Preview and Calendar of Events (July/Aug 2001), mentioned 29.
Exhibition HistoryLos Angeles, CA, University of Southern California, "Some German Expressionists," November 4-26, 1954 (as Head, 1916).
Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "Masterpieces of Art: In Memory of William R. Valentiner, 1880-1958," April 6-May 17, 1959, cat. no. 167, illus. (b-w).
Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "Partial Figure," February 14-August 23, 2026.
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