Petit singe sur un chariot

Marc was 26 when he painted this in 1906, and none of the saturated colour he later became known for is here yet. He worked on coarse burlap, laying the paint on in broad strokes so that the weave keeps breaking through, and he flattened everything into shapes that look almost cut out with a stencil. A cart stands on the diagonal across the picture with four small monkeys tumbling over it, a man in a hat has his back to us at the left, and behind them there is a meadow and one large tree. The loose, light handling comes out of a stay in France three years earlier, which was the first time he had seen a lot of Impressionist painting at close range.