The Artist’s Daughter Antonia with Fur (unfinished), 1930

The artist Anton Kolig’s (1886–1950) eldest daughter is sitting on a chair. The fur coat, which Marie Antoinette (1912–1980) has wrapped around herself, artfully highlights her bare shoulders and knees. This invests the portrait with a sensual aspect. Kolig possibly saw the painting as a reference to the work The Fur by Peter Paul Rubens. Among his five children, Marie Antoinette was the one the artist painted most often. Her French name is owed to the fact that she was born on 4th November 1912 in Paris, where Kolig and his wife Katharina (1885–1971) were staying at the time for study purposes. At the time the large-format likeness was created, Toni or Tontschi, as she was called, was 18 years old. By this point, the entire family had been living for two years in Stuttgart, where Kolig had moved following his appointment as professor to the Stuttgart Academy. Around this time, Marie Antoinette met the painter Arthur Steiger, a student in Kolig’s painting class, whom she married soon after.

AK, 2023