Macke, August Lot n° 8037

"Garden on Lake Thun III" Watercolor over pencil on laid paper. 1914. 24 x 31 cm. Verso with the red estate stamp, there inscribed by Elisabeth Erdmann-Macke in pen and black "120 a" as well as titled in pencil in the upper margin and inscribed "verkäuflich" and "120 a". Probably Heiderich 531 (no illustration, whereabouts unknown). Paradise. An earthly Garden of Eden, shortly before the catastrophe. Nature is filled with light, colors play, shimmer, shine. These great themes in Macke's work appear here as the constituent basic motif. Delicately illuminated and then again strongly colored fields in pink and yellow, blue and green, along with small dots of color, form the abstract garden backdrop, similar to a faceted stained glass window, in which the tips of the yellow-green palms shine like stars. Cool and warm, light and dark are juxtaposed, as are complementary hues. The tubs and trunks of the palms interpret the motif spatially, as do the diagonal-perspective color areas in the ground area. As in the Tunisian watercolors inspired by his trip to Tunisia with Paul Klee and Louis Moilliet in April 1914, the white paper shimmers through the color mosaic in places. Almost like a church window, the fields of the vertically and diagonally structured color areas are offset in the brightness values like a checkerboard, the angularly pointed, crystalline surfaces and flat curves are finely balanced against each other in swinging movement; they clearly delimit themselves from each other in powerful chiaroscuro and reflect Macke's reception of cubist design. Artistically as well as culturally, the years 1912/13 already represented a high point in Macke's oeuvre, including exhibitions of the "Blauer Reiter" in Munich at Thannhauser's, in Cologne, Hagen, Frankfurt and in the Berlin gallery "Der Sturm", with "Sonderbund" exhibitions and the First German Autumn Salon. In 1912 Macke had made the acquaintance of Delaunay in Paris, seen the French Cubists and above all Picasso at the "Sonderbund", and also become acquainted with works by the Italian Futurists at the Feldmann Art Salon in Cologne. After Macke had followed Delaunay's work closely and with interest, his "Contrastes simultanés" influenced in particular the small series of watercolors from Hilterfingen: in 1914, in close temporal connection with Macke's trip to Tunis, the small group of garden watercolors (Heiderich 464-468), outstanding in their radiance, was created in the garden of Haus Rosengarten in Hilterfingen on Lake Thun. Four of them are listed in the estate under "A 120 a" and "A 120" as "Unser Garten am See" ("Our Garden by the Lake"); two of them were previously known only from illustrations, one is considered lost. Within this small complex of works, the present sheet, most likely number Heiderich 531, would therefore most likely have to be placed between the work catalog numbers 467 (Garten am Thunersee II) and 468 (Garten am Thunersee IV). In composition and coloring, our sheet is particularly comparable to the "Garden at Lake Thun" (Garnet Tree and Palm Tree in the Garden, inv. no. DL82, Heiderich 465) in the Albertina. Macke owned a French folding box, which served him as a travel easel and in which the sheets of paper were fixed laterally on the right and left with ribbons; the white stripes in the sides stemming from this prove the creation of the watercolor directly in front of the motif in the garden (Heiderich 1997, pp. 43 and 48). "These masterly watercolors are far freer in color and form than the paintings created at the same time. They show the artist at the height of his creative powers and open a small window on what might have become had the curve of Macke's life and work not been so brutally bent by the outbreak of war." (Heiderich p. 48). But Macke captures the beauty of life once again in this watercolor. We thank Dr. Tanja Pirsig-Marshall, Westfälisches Landesmuseum, Münster, for kind information dated 01.05.2023. Provenance: Estate of the artist, Bonn Collection Dr. Rolf Parow Private property Berlin (probably since the 1950s/1960s) Exhibition: Das junge Rheinland, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne 1918, possibly no. 468 (cat. untraceable) August Macke, Graphic Cabinet van Bergh and Comp. (Dr. Koch), Düsseldorf 1919 August Macke, Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover 1935, No. 78 Paula Modersohn-Becker 1876-1907. August Macke 1877-1914, Kunsthalle Basel, 1936, No. 144 Macke. Watercolor exhibition, Städtisches Kunsthaus Bielefeld 1957, No. 415 (there titled "Unser Garten am See 3"; not exhibited).