Wassily Kandinsky

Alexander Strakosch, Switzerland
Clemens Weiler, Wiesbaden
Kleeman Galleries, New York (sale: Parke-Bernet, New York, 11th December 1963, lot 48)
Private Collection, USA (purchased at the above sale)
Sale: Sotheby's, London, 7th July 1971, lot 20
Waddington Galleries, London (purchased at the above sale)
Acquired from the above by the mother of the present owner

New York, Kleeman Galleries, Kandinsky, 1957, no. 24, illustrated in the catalogue
New York, Leonard Hutton Galleries, Der Blaue Reiter, 1963, no. 4

Will Grohmann, Wassily Kandinsky, Life and Work, London, 1959, no. 578, illustrated p. 397
Hans K. Roethel and Jean K. Benjamin, Kandinsky Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings 1900-1915, London, 1982, vol. I, no. 250, illustrated p. 241

Herbst bei Murnau is a beautiful example from a series of small oils Kandinsky executed during his first stay in Murnau in 1908 (fig. 2). The depicted site lies just outside Murnau and the purple-green foliage and the red apples on the tree suggest early autumn. The weeks Kandinsky spent there in 1908 were among the most pivotal in the development of his art. The picturesque scenery of the countryside around the village of Murnau, south of Munich, gave his paintings a renewed energy. The liberty taken with colour by the Fauve painters whose works Kandinsky had seen in Paris in 1905-07 had been a revelation, pointing the way towards the invention of a pictorial language that would free painting from the object. In Murnau, Kandinsky was able to build on that experience, and to understand, like Matisse and Derain, how to formulate an abstraction from nature (fig. 3). Landscapes, such as the present one, are characterised by a simplification of forms which represent a crucial transition between the artist’s early paintings and the momentous works of 1910 which herald Kandinsky's art of chromatic abstraction.

Kandinsky’s companion in Murnau was the painter Gabriele Münter, and they frequently met with two other painter friends Marianna von Werefkin und Alexej von Jawlensky. Münter remembered this period of the four of them working together as ‘very beautiful, interesting and joyful, with numerous discussions about art’ (quoted in Andrea Witte, ‘Alexei von Jawlensky et Wassily Kandinsky; Rapports avec le neo-impressionnisme’ in Signac et la libération de la couleur, Paris, 1997, p. 260). Jawlensky introduced Münter and Kandinsky to the local tradition of glass painting, an art form that was to make a great impact on Kandinsky’s art. His response to the simplicity and forcefulness of folk-art is apparent here in the way the brightness of the reds and greens glow out from the darker colours surrounding them. Although a certain fidelity to first-hand observation is still predominant, such as the way he records the time of day and season, the abstract element is beginning to assert itself over nature in the confident, resonant dabs and lines of pure colour.

The influence of Fauve art is clearly visible throughout Kandinsky’s paintings of the Murnau period. The Fauves had exhibited for the first time as a group in 1905, at the Salon d’Automne in Paris in which Kandinsky and Jawlensky had also taken part. The expressive colouring used by Matisse, Dufy and Vlaminck now became a means, in Kandinsky’s hands, to render the object increasingly insignificant (fig 4). He admired both Picasso and Matisse and the daring colours of the Fauves, and must also have sympathised with the painter and theoretician Maurice Denis, one of the precursors of the Symbolist movement, who made the famous statement: ’A picture – before being a horse, a nude or an anecdotal subject – is essentially a flat surface covered with colours arranged in a certain order’ (quoted in Ulrike Becks-Malorny, Wassily Kandinsky, Cologne, 2003, p. 30).

Herbst bei Murnau can be seen not only as a reflection of the influence of contemporary French Fauve painting and Bavarian folk art on Kandinsky’s work, but also as a product of his Russian artistic heritage. The use of red pigment, the composition of the work and the style can also be related to his earlier works inspired by Russian scenes and fairy tales (fig. 5). The advanced almost two-dimensional quality of the composition and the use of linear brush strokes evoke the influence of the technique of medieval glass painting and the brushwork used by post-impressionist painters, such as Van Gogh. The present work is not only a strong example of the painter’s Murnau period, but already heralds Kandinsky’s most advanced ideas that were going to change the history of painting.

FIG. 1, Kandinsky in Murnau, circa 1908-09
FIG. 2, Wassily Kandinsky, Herbststudie bei Oberau, 1908, oil on board, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich
FIG. 3, Henri Matisse, Paysage de Collioure/Etude pour ‘Le bonheur de vivre’, 1905, oil on canvas, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen
FIG. 4, Wassily Kandinsky, Murnau Kohlgruberstrasse, 1908, oil on board, Private Collection
FIG. 5, Wassily Kandinsky, Reitendes Paar, 1906-07, oil on canvas, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich