Fog between firs

In 1905 Franz Marc was 25, a few years out of the Munich Academy, and still painting what stood in front of him. This is fog between fir trees, oil on cardboard, about 24 centimetres wide and small enough to carry in a coat pocket. Six years later he co-founded the Blaue Reiter with Kandinsky, and the blue horses and red deer that came after are what his name now brings to mind. He volunteered in 1914 and was killed by a shell splinter near Verdun in March 1916, at 36. The Staatliche Kunsthalle in Karlsruhe keeps this little board among its landscapes, from the years when he was still working out of doors in the woods of upper Bavaria.