Sketch from Murnau

When Jawlensky, Werefkin, Kandinsky and Münter began working side by side in Murnau, Jawlensky often cast himself as the teacher. The Lenbachhaus describes him as the only one of the four who was already a painter with experience abroad, and he passed on what he had picked up from his studies in France freely. Kandinsky later thanked him for the time, as he put it, when you taught me. This small sketch of a village street, from 1908 or 1909, still shows that French schooling, set down lightly and quickly in the manner of the street scenes by the French painters he admired. The bright, strong reds are his own. In the house fronts he let the bare board do the work, so the ochre you see there is the colour of the cardboard itself. Kandinsky and Münter painted many of their own Murnau pictures on the same kind of board.