Red Deer II

In December 1910 Marc wrote to his friend the painter August Macke setting out what he thought colours actually were. Blue was the male principle, austere and spiritual. Yellow was the female principle, gentle and cheerful. Red was matter, brutal and heavy, the one the other two had to fight. He meant it as a working rule. Two years later he painted deer in red. The German title is Rote Rehe, red roe deer, the small deer of the woods around Sindelsdorf in Upper Bavaria, where he had settled in 1910 and painted almost nothing but animals. 1912 was a crowded year for him. The Blaue Reiter almanac he edited with Kandinsky had come out that spring, and in October he and Macke travelled to Paris to see Robert Delaunay. He had four years left, and was killed at Verdun in 1916, at 36.