Helene Funke (Chemnitz 1869 - 1957 Vienna)
"Portrait of Ninon Dolbin"
1920's
pencil on paper
35,2 x 33,5 cm
in pencil signed lower right "H. Funke"
Listed and illustrated in the catalogue raisonne:
Peter Funke, Die Malerin Helene Funke, 1869-1957, Leben und Werk (Wien: Boehlau, 2011), p. 227
Discussion:
Ninon Dolbin (1895-1966), nee Auslaender, was the third wife of Hermann Hesse; they married in 1931, after which she was known as Ninon Hesse.
Dolbin, an art historian, was a friend of Helene Funke. See: Stella Rollig and Sabine Fellner,
Stadt der Frauen/City of Women: Künstlerinnen in Wien 1900-1938/Female Artists in Vienna 1900-1938 (Munich, London, New York: Prestel, 2019), p. 132. Dolbin "wrote to her future husband Hermann Hesse in March 1926: 'Yesterday I was with Helene Funke, a painter whom I love and respect greatly. She is a lonely person, getting on in years, impoverished by the inflation in Germany, and paints wonderful pictures. It makes me so sorry to see how frail she is as a person, when, in fact, she is much stronger than others, being able to create a world herself.' " Rollig and Sabine at p. 135.
