Study for Impression IV (Policeman)

On 12 March 1911 Munich held a lantern procession to the Konigsplatz for the 90th birthday of Prince Regent Luitpold, who had governed Bavaria for 25 years in place of a king declared unfit to rule. The painting this sheet works towards, Impression IV, holds on to what that evening looked like from the pavement. A mounted gendarme keeps back a crowd carrying coloured lanterns, and two men in black raise their hats level with the horse's lowered head. Here the scene is still legible as drawing, pencil and ink with a little watercolour, about 18 by 21 centimetres. Kandinsky reserved the word Impression for pictures that started from something he had actually seen. The sheet stayed in the studio all his life and came to Paris through his widow Nina, who handed the French state what she still held.