Portrait of Elisabeth Macke

Of all the painters around the Blue Rider, Macke made by far the most portraits, the Lenbachhaus notes, first and foremost the many of his wife Elisabeth. This one is painted on a small wooden panel, about 22 by 16 centimetres. On the back, in a hand other than the painter's, someone wrote 1910 Frühjahr, spring 1910. That spring the couple were living by the Tegernsee, the lake south of Munich where they had settled after their wedding the previous autumn, and on 13 April Elisabeth gave birth to their first son, Walter. The museum bought the panel in 1974.