The reason for the art-technological examination is long-held speculation about the context of the work's creation and its dating. Even with the naked eye, deeper layers of paint are visible at the edge of the painting, suggesting that an earlier painting by Nussbaum lies beneath the current depiction.

History of the painting

X-ray and infrared radiation confirmed this assumption and yielded further insights into the work's genesis, necessitating a re-dating of the painting, which was hidden in mid-1942 by exiled Felix Nussbaum in a depot belonging to his physician, Dr. Grosfils. It was rediscovered in the late 1960s by Auguste Moses-Nussbaum, the artist's cousin, and sold by the heirs through the Hasenclever Gallery into private ownership in the mid-1970s. Since 2008, it has been on permanent loan to the Center for Persecuted Arts in Solingen.

The catalogue raisonné has thus far interpreted the painting "Desolate Street" as a visionary premonition of death and dates it to 1928. An article in the newspaper Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courrant, published on February 11, 1939, mentions the painting for the first time as Rue Triste. Extensive art-historical investigations are now shedding light on the mystery surrounding the painting's creation.

The find

X-rays can reveal deeper layers to the human eye. Thus, the X-ray image allows us to see a previously unknown painting by Felix Nussbaum, the depiction of which can be found in two drawings.

These sketches now allow for a definitive dating of both the overpainted depiction and Rue Triste: In the catalogue raisonné, the preliminary drawings are linked to the outbreak of war in Poland in 1939. The painting Rue Triste, therefore, cannot have been created before 1938. Whether the drawings were made as preliminary studies or to document the overpainted depiction cannot currently be determined with certainty.

After Nussbaum's deportation, the drawings remained in his secret Brussels studio on Rue Général Gratry. In 1980, one was donated to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial by Roger Katz in memory of his family, who were murdered in the Shoah.

The other is in the Jewish Museum Frankfurt. Both have the working title The Great Destruction. Nussbaum himself labelled them neutrally as Version I and Version II. The image under the Rue Triste corresponds more closely to the drawing from Yad Vashem, Version II.

Art-historical classification

The apocalyptic nature of the two drawings is obvious. The people's surroundings are a landscape of ruins. The sun and moon appear simultaneously in the sky. But quite unlike the drawings and oil paintings from the years before 1938, groups of people interact with one another in these drawings and also in the overpainted oil painting. Similar to his historical paintings of 1942 and 1943, he attempts here to describe his reality metaphorically, and this is not the beginning of the Second World War, but rather the pogroms of November 9, 1938, in the German Reich.

The Kristallnacht pogrom was a profound turning point for Felix Nussbaum. In a letter, he calls it a "devil's bath." On the one hand, the years of terror and persecution of Jews in Germany were now brought to the streets, and on the other hand, the last members of his family left their old home. In 1937, Nussbaum had tried to bring his parents to Belgium.

But Philipp and Rahel Nussbaum had to flee from Cologne to Amsterdam immediately after Kristallnacht. Following the forced sale of the company Gossels & Nussbaum in Osnabrück in the spring of 1933, this renewed escape of the parents represents a provisional climax of persecution and humiliation.

Art technology investigation

In addition to visualizing the overpainted image, further traces of the creative process emerge. Using infrared radiation, pentimenti—artist-made revisions during the painting process—can be identified. The painting depicts a cat, seemingly startled and halting in the street for no apparent reason.

However, the inflectogram shows us a pile of rubble in front of which the cat is poised to attack. The infrared image suggests that the rubble consists of window frames and shards of glass. The Nazi press downplayed the pogrom of 1938 as Kristallnacht. The pile of rubble from shattered windows could symbolize this.

The question now arises: why did Felix Nussbaum paint over the image he had presumably constructed using two preliminary sketches? Why did he paint this street canyon with the plague flags and the cat?

Nussbaum's reckoning with Nazi Germany

Rue Triste bears a striking resemblance to Johannisstraße in Osnabrück, the street of his childhood and youth. His parents' house was located on Schlossstraße, not far from the large Gothic St. John's Church, and the headquarters of his father's company was in the immediate vicinity on Seminarstraße. Could it not be seen in Rue Triste as a painful reminder of his birthplace?

Nussbaum quickly painted over an apocalyptic scene depicting Kristallnacht in December 1938 for the exhibition in February 1939, becoming more personal—triggered by news of the terror his parents were experiencing in Cologne. The reports of burning synagogues and the public murder of German Jews were likely the impetus for the two drawings and the overpainted oil painting.

The news of his family's final expulsion led him to radically abandon his original artistic concept. In this historic moment, Felix Nussbaum paints over the apocalypse and settles accounts with his birthplace, with Germany, capturing in his painting a deserted, dead, dreary place of the past.