Lembrança de Veneza 4 (Ponte Rialto)

In 1904 Wassily Kandinsky was in his late thirties and still years away from the abstract painting he is remembered for. He and the painter Gabriele Munter, his companion, were travelling through Europe, and a stop in Venice left him with this small tempera on cardboard. The Rialto Bridge is still clearly the Rialto here, its arch and shops crossing the Grand Canal, though the light is already broken into flecks and the water into short dabs. He made it one of a numbered set of Venice memories rather than a single view. It came to this Paris museum in 1981, left by his widow, Nina Kandinsky.