Wassily Kandinsky

Gabriele Münter
Otto Stangl, Munich
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Sotheby's London, Fifty Paintings by Vasily Kandinsky, 30 June 1964, lot 1 
Galerie Beyeler, Basel
Falk Collection, Milan
Private collection, acquired from the above in the 1970s
Christie's London, Impressionist and Modern Art, 22 June 2005, lot 227
Sotheby's New York, Impressionist and Modern Art, 9 May 2007, lot 352
Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts; Paris, Musée National d'Art Moderne; London, Tate Gallery; Lyon, Palais Saint-Pierre; Oslo, Kunsthernes Hus; Rome, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Kandinsky: 45 Paintings from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1957-58

Artist's Handlist, Small Oil Studies, no.59
W.Grohmann, Wassily Kandinsky: Leben und Werk, Cologne, 1958, p.342, no.549 illustrated, p.395 (incorrectly dated 1904)
H.Roethel and J.Benjamin, Kandinsky, Catalogue raisonné of the Oil Paintings, vol.I, 1900-1915, London, 1982, p.111, no.90 illustrated

The canvasboard has been mounted on a wooden stretcher. The edges are slightly uneven and show slight wear as do the corners. Pinholes which have been painted in are visible in each of the four corners and the centre of the upper and lower edges. There is a light layer of surface dirt, particularly apparent in the white background. There are a couple of very minor paint chips, one in the green pigment below the middle of the right edge, another below the chimney in the central house. There are very fine cracks in the areas of brown impasto. The lower right edge bears the remnants of gilding from a previous frame. Examination under UV light reveals retouching to each of the pinholes and minor scattered areas in the sky. The work is floated in a black painted wooden frame. Unexamined out of frame
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Wassily Kandinsky spent the summer of 1903 in the Bavarian village of Kallmünz where he executed a series of small oil studies of the town and surrounding countryside. It was during this summer that he began a twelve year relationship with his student, the painter Gabriele Münter.