Akhtyrka, Autumn

The title and the back of this little board point in two different directions. The Lenbachhaus catalogues it as a sketch for Akhtyrka, Autumn. Akhtyrka was a country estate north-east of Moscow, near Sergiev Posad, that belonged to the Trubetskoy princes, and Kandinsky would paint there in the summer of 1917. Yet on the reverse, in his own hand, the board is labelled Munich, with a number, 57, and the start of the German word for autumn study, which breaks off. So it may be a Russian place painted from memory in Bavaria, or a Munich autumn study he later tied to a Russian picture. The museum's record does not settle it. What it does record is the paint, oil mixed with distemper, a quick-drying glue-bound colour, on a canvas-covered board 33 centimetres wide, signed KANDINSKY in red at the lower right.