Ernst Ludwig Kirchner came to Davos in 1917 to convalesce and discovered in the mountains surrounding the Alpine resort a new source of inspiration. Reinterpreting stylistic features he had brought with him from Berlin, he created masterly landscapes in his typically nervous manner, characterized by angular hatching and strong colour contrasts. The Berlin coquettes who had enlivened his famous street scenes slipped into the role of local peasant women; their punters became Alpine peasants engaged in their daily tasks.

Depictions of interiors with people sitting around a table—conversing or eating in the studio, a café or restaurant, or a farmhouse—are very common in Kirchner’s oeuvre. There are three prominent examples of the latter: Peasant Lunch (1920, Gordon 0644), Farming Family Eating (1922, Gordon 0706), both in landscape format, and this portrait-format painting in the ‘New Style’.

By the time this stylistic shift occurred, Kirchner had already been living on the outskirts of the Alpine town for several years and had captured his surroundings and mountain life in all its facets and from every angle. In his paintings, areas of colour became calmer and more homogeneous, defined by intertwining concave and convex lines. Broad, rounded forms alternated in strong colour contrasts, resulting in a monumental style of expression.

Kirchner himself selected this painting for his largest retrospective in 1933 at the Kunsthalle Bern. The composition shows two seated figures, shaded in blue, brown, and black, with pale pink flesh tones, spooning from white plates on the table. One figure sits on a bench in the lower right, leaning leftwards over the table. Their head meets and merges with that of the second figure, seated frontally behind the table to the left, sharing the same colour scheme. This large figurative work employs the forms and colour fields of “abstraction creation” against a wall and floor decorated predominantly in green tones—an intense paraphrase of the shared meal.

The painting is presented in its original Kirchner frame and is signed and dated “28” in the upper right, as well as signed and dated “28” on the reverse. It also bears the estate stamp and the number “KN-Da/Bi 13”.