마리아 프랑크의 초상

This was painted in 1906, when Marc was 26 and years away from the blue horses he is known for. The sitter is Maria Franck, a painter from Berlin he had met the year before. Their marriage took another seven years to arrange. Marc married a different woman in 1907, the painter Marie Schnuer, partly so that she could keep custody of her son, and the tangle of that divorce kept him and Maria from marrying until 1913. He was killed near Verdun in 1916, at 36. She outlived him by nearly 40 years and spent them looking after his work. This small portrait stayed with her, and it reached a public collection only in 1985, out of her estate.