Impression IV (Constable)

On the 12th of March 1911 Munich held a lantern procession across the Königsplatz for the 90th birthday of Prince Regent Luitpold, the old man who ran Bavaria in place of King Ludwig, set aside as insane. Kandinsky, living in the city, seems to have taken that evening as his starting point. That is why the picture carries the odd subtitle Gendarme, sometimes given in English as Constable: near the centre two dark figures raise their hats in salute beside the bowed head of a horse, and to one side a crowd blurs under floating lanterns ringed in heavy black. This was one of six paintings he called Impressions that year, his word for pictures still tied to something seen, as against the Improvisations and Compositions with which he was pulling loose from nature. You can watch him leaving the visible behind here. The gendarme and the horse have nearly dissolved into pure colour, and within two years he would paint canvases with no scene left at all. Gabriele Münter, the painter who shared those Munich years with him, kept the work and gave it to the Lenbachhaus in 1957.