Little oak tree

In 1909 Franz Marc was working in Sindelsdorf, a village in the Bavarian foothills south of Munich. He was 29, still painting outdoors in front of the motif, and the artist who had struck him hardest was Vincent van Gogh, whose paintings had overwhelmed him in Paris two years earlier. The Neue Deutsche Biographie, Germany's national biographical dictionary, names this painting of a young oak as one of the Sindelsdorf pictures that still show that debt. The tree, the meadow and even the sky are built up from short, separate, curling strokes. That December Marc helped hang seven van Gogh paintings at the Brakl gallery, a show that pushed him further in the same direction. Here the signature, just the name Marc, sits in the lower right corner, and the Lenbachhaus bought the canvas in 1961.