Study for a self-portrait

In the spring of 1907 Macke went to stay with his elder sister in Kandern, a small town in the Black Forest, and there, according to the Lenbachhaus, he first came into contact with Impressionist painting. Up to then he had made only a few dozen pictures. Back home in Bonn he painted himself on this small piece of cardboard, about 26 centimetres high. He was 20. He looks straight out with wide-open eyes, and the skin, lips and eyes are worked in restless strokes of greenish blue and pinkish beige. It was a study for a finished self-portrait of the same year, darker and more formal, which is now in Münster. This first version stayed with the Macke family until 2017, when the museum bought it from them with a donation from its friends' association.