The Berlin Painting That Set Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's Auction Record

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Berliner Strassenszene (Berlin street scene). Baume (Trees) (1913-14) sold for $34m at Christie's New York on November 8, 2006.

Kirchner's masterwork depicts a crowded Berlin street, in the center of which are two flamboyantly dressed women. On the reverse of the canvas he painted trees.

The oil on canvas work was the subject of a forced sale under the Nazis when Hans Hess and his widowed mother, Tekla, had to flee Germany. It had belonged to the collection amassed by Hans' late father, Alfred, a wealthy industrialist who had made a fortune selling army boots to the Soviet Union. In the UK, Hans Hess, who was a Marxist art historian, became a museum curator and then director of York Art Gallery.

The painting passed through different hands and was eventually purchased in 1980 by the Brücke Museum in Berlin. After negotiations, the institution returned Berliner Strassenszene to Hans Hess's daughter, Anita Halpin, a British communist and trade union activist.

The record breaking sale in 2006 made Halpin an extremely wealthy woman when the painting was bought by Ronald Lauder for his Neue Galerie in New York.

Kirchner's previous record was set by Portrait of woman in white (recto); Adam and Eve (verso) (1908), which sold for $7.68m at Christie's on February 6, 2006. The work had been traded 3 times in the past.

A Brief History of Kirchner at Auction