Three Animals

The Kunsthalle Mannheim bought this canvas in 1919, seven years after Franz Marc painted it. The white dog stepping forward is, according to the museum, Russi, Marc's own Siberian sheepdog, whom he drew and painted again and again. Beside him sit a cat with its eyes closed and a red fox curled up asleep, three animals that would hardly share a hillside this peacefully. The picture's own story was much rougher. In April 1933 the Nazi-appointed acting director of the Kunsthalle staged a show ridiculing the museum's modern purchases, hung without frames and with their prices on display, and works by Marc were among them. Later the canvas was seized from the museum and then given back. It spent the Second World War in safe storage and returned to Mannheim after the war ended.