Grazing Horses I

In 1958 Munich turned 800, and the Bavarian state government marked the anniversary with a present for the city, this canvas of grazing horses, which reached the Lenbachhaus the following year. Marc had painted it in 1910 at Sindelsdorf, the village in the foothills where he was living, and horses at pasture were the motif he kept wrestling with in those years. The museum records that he even had a wooden shed put up on the pasture itself, so that his larger-than-life canvases could stay out there with the animals. This one is more modest, about 64 by 94 centimetres, and unsigned. The bodies are still closely studied from life. The horse at the back, turned away from us and looking out into the land, is the one the museum singles out, the animal most tied into its surroundings.