Small Horse Study II

In 1905 Franz Marc was 25 and still deciding what kind of painter he would be. That year, in Munich, he got to know Jean Bloé Niestlé, a Swiss artist who painted animals as subjects in their own right, and the acquaintance pushed him towards the animal pictures he became known for. This is one of the small studies from that turn. Oil on cardboard, 15.5 by 24 centimetres, smaller than a sheet of writing paper, and all of it goes on the weight and the stance of one horse. Marc was still painting horses in the colours horses come in. The blue ones were six years off. The board stayed in the family, and the Bavarian state bought it in 1985 out of the estate of his widow, Maria Marc, the year before the Franz Marc Museum opened in Kochel.