Two Blue Donkeys

In February 1912 the Blue Rider, the circle Marc and Wassily Kandinsky had launched in Munich the winter before, opened its second exhibition at the dealer Hans Goltz's gallery, a show made up entirely of works on paper. This small gouache, about 35 centimetres high, was chosen for it, and the Zurich collector Franz Stadler bought it there. It then stayed with his family for more than a century.

The work has a second title, Horse and Donkey, which is closer to what you see: a blue donkey in front and a larger, darker horse behind it, both built from angular patches of colour. Marc had been living in the village of Sindelsdorf, south of Munich, since 1910, with animals all around him. From 1997 to 2019 the sheet was on long loan to the New Walk Museum in Leicester, which holds Britain's largest collection of German Expressionist art, and in 2020 it was offered at auction in London.