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Description: Schafherde I (Schafherde im Stall) signed 'Fz Marc' (lower right) gouache, watercolour and charcoal on paper 191/2 x 233/8in. (49.5 x 59.5cm.) Executed 1908 PROVENANCE Emil Hirsch, Munich. Galerie Thannhauser, Munich. Acquired from the above by the family of the present owner, circa 1950. LITERATURE K. Lankheit, Franz Marc, Katalog der Werke, Cologne 1970, no. 290 (illustrated). EXHIBITION Munich, M쳌nchner Neue Sezession, Franz Marc Ged„chtnis-Ausstellung, M쳌nchen, 1916, no. 14. Dresden, Galerie Neue Kunst Fides Dresden, Franz Marc: Aquarelle-Zeichnngen-Graphik, October-November 1927, no. 78. Hanover, Kestner Gesellschaft Hannover, Franz Marc Ged„chtnis-Ausstellung, March-April 1936, no.111. Berlin, Galrie v.d. Heyde, Franz Marc Ged„chtnis-Ausstellung, May 1936, no. 64. NOTES Please note the current work is listed under II-1908-3 with Schardt. In 1908, Franz Marc spent the summer in the south of Bavaria, in Lenggries, from where he frequently visited the Staffelalm, an Alpine pasture. The surrounding nature and the animals living in this remote and unspoilt environment often feature in his works of this period. The use of opaque white in order to highten the colours is typical for Marc's work of the time. As his wife Maria later recalled, it was particularly the combination of nature and bright light which Marc was taken by during this summer. The motifs could not be bright and sunny enough when he captured them in his watercolours. (See Exh. cat. Franz Marc 1880-1916, St„dtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, p. 23). The summer of 1908 in Lenggries is also the time when Marc executed his first drawings of horses; a subject matter which would lead him later that year away from the earlier naturalism towards his well known synthesis of form and colour as a metaphor for enjoying a joyful communion with nature.