Saint-Cloud Park, clearing

When Kandinsky set up his easel in the park of Saint-Cloud, just west of Paris, he was painting in the grounds of a palace that was no longer there. The château, a favourite residence of both Napoleons, burned in October 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, after a French shell aimed at Prussian guns in the park landed on it. The ruins were cleared away in 1891. What survived was the garden André Le Nôtre, the designer of Versailles, had laid out for the king's brother, and by the time Kandinsky was living in neighbouring Sèvres it was a place where Parisians came to walk. He chose a clearing among the trees and painted it on a piece of cardboard about 24 by 33 centimetres. The board came to the Centre Pompidou in 1981, in the bequest of his widow, Nina Kandinsky.