Flowers and Yellow Thistles

Maria Franck-Marc usually left her paintings undated and unsigned, and she kept them with little care, often barely framed. So this canvas can only be placed around 1913, the year she and Franz Marc were at last able to marry. Flowers were among her strongest subjects in these years. Some of her flower pieces from about this time, such as an unfinished picture of flowers and leaves now in the Franz Marc Museum in Kochel, push close to abstraction. Here yellow thistles stand among the flowers of the title, on a canvas about 50 by 40 centimetres. It was bought in 2022 by the Lenbachhaus's association of friends, which has lent it to the museum.