View of Basel and the Rhine

Kirchner painted this work during a period when he was living in the Swiss Alpine resort of Davos, where he had moved in 1917 to recover from severe physical and mental illness brought on by his traumatic experience in World War I. His visit to Basel in 1927 was connected to his organization of a memorial exhibition at the Kunsthalle Basel for his close friend, the young painter Albert Müller, who had died unexpectedly of typhus in December 1926. The painting was purchased from the Kirchner Estate through the New York dealer Buchholz Gallery in 1948 — among the earlier acquisitions of Kirchner's work by an American museum. The Saint Louis Art Museum, which holds one of the largest collections of German Expressionist painting in the United States, catalogues the work under the title Basel with the Rhine.