Maria and Franz Marc in Macke’s studio in Bonn

The couple in this studio are Franz Marc, the Munich painter who had been Macke's close friend since 1910, and Maria Franck, also a painter, who became Marc's wife. Macke drew them in his own studio in Bonn in 1912. That autumn the Marcs stopped in Bonn on their way home from Paris, and the two men painted a Paradise straight onto the plaster of that same studio wall. The museum does not say whether this sheet comes from those days. It is pastel on tracing paper, a thin, see-through sheet about 32 centimetres high, and the Lenbachhaus lists a window and the act of painting among what it shows. It reached Munich with Gabriele Münter's 1957 gift.