40 - August Macke

August Macke Dorfstraße in Kandern I 1911 Watercolour, colour chalks and charcoal on parchment paper. 27 x 32 cm. Framed under glass. Unsigned. - In fine condition with fresh colours. Heiderich Aquarelle 121 Provenance Sophie Gerhardt, Bonn; private ownership; Galerie Rudolf Probst, Mannheim; Dr. Otto Jordan Collection, Munich; thenceforth, family ownership, South Germany Exhibitions Cologne 947 (Alte Universität), August Macke. Gedächtnisausstellung, cat. no. 100, ill. p. 28; Aachen 1948 (Suermondt-Museum), Gedächtnisausstellung des Museumsvereins, cat. no. 40; Oldenburg 1948/49 (Kunstverein), August Macke. Gemälde, Aquarelle und Zeichnungen, cat. no. 40; Bochum 1949 (Richard-Baltz-Haus), August Macke. Gedächtnisausstellung, cat. no. 42; Duisburg 1949 (Städtisches Museum), August Macke, cat. no. 71; Dortmund 1949 (Museum am Ostwall), August Macke Gedächtnisausstellung, cat. no. 70; Hanover 1949 (Kunstverein), Friedliche Kunst. Niederdeutsche Maler 1900-1914, cat. no. 72; Meschede 1951 (Landratsamt), August Macke. Gedächtnisausstellung, cat. no. 47 Literature Gustav Vriesen, August Macke, 2nd extended ed., Stuttgart 1957, cat. no. 81, with ill. p. 276; exh. cat. Macke. Aquarell-Ausstellung, Städtisches Kunsthaus Bielefeld 1957, no. 81, ill. p. 17 (not exhibited); Ursula Heiderich, August Macke. Aquarelle. Werkverzeichnis, Ostfildern-Ruit 1997, p. 24, with ill. August Macke spent September 1911 with his sister Auguste in the town of Kandern in the Black Forest, where she ran a hotel together with her family. This was one of a number of extended visits there: when Macke’s mother also moved to Kandern after the death of his father, the idyllic little town became a second home to the painter. It was not just family bonds that drew him there, he also cherished this area for artistic reasons. “You wouldn’t believe how good I feel here. […] I don’t know of anywhere else that offers passages as classically beautiful as this magnificent Kandern”, he wrote to his future wife Elisabeth as early as 1905 (cited from: Werner Frese/Ernst-Gerhard Güse (ed.), August Macke. Briefe an Elisabeth und die Freunde, Munich 1987, p. 63). In our drawing, Macke has used watercolour, charcoal and coloured chalk to capture a typical scene in this rural town. A farmer is driving a small herd of cattle along a sunken lane that is covered by tender-green trees and leads to cubistically simplified buildings while the curved ridges of the Black Forest rise up in the blue mist of the background. The composition is filled with the light of late summer and, with its clear contours and delicately gradated fields of colour, it is stimulatingly but harmoniously balanced. The watercolour “Dorfstraße in Kandern II” (Heiderich Aquarelle 122), which was likely painted immediately afterward, realises an almost identical motif in a decidedly more expressive manner. In 1913 Macke once again dealt with a similar motif in his painting “Dorfstraße in Kandern” (Heiderich Gemälde 504).