Lot 211 Dα

This small drawing depicts Elisabeth Macke, the wife of the artist, as can be recognised without difficulty through her thick hair, the heart-shaped contour of her face and her distinctive eyebrows. This portrait in bust format is placed on the sheet in such a way that it nearly fills the page; she is reading with her head bowed.
If we survey the oeuvre of August Macke, his family circle forms one of the major thematic areas, and Elisabeth was a preferred model within it: shown doing housework and needlework, reading is nonetheless presumably her favourite activity. Alone or accompanied by her mother or her child, these portraits are intimate affirmations of domestic happiness. However, the present drawing also testifies to Macke's familiarity with the work of the Cubists. After hanging the Cologne Sonderbundausstellung in 1912, he enthusiastically wrote to Franz Marc: “Picasso! Picasso! Picasso!” (25 May 1912, see Wolfgang Macke (ed.), Briefwechsel August Macke - Franz Marc, Cologne 1964, p. 123). The physiognomic composition of the figure is no longer characterised in terms of discrete surfaces; instead, light and shadow are present in broken, partial surfaces - without neglecting the portrait's resemblance to the sitter.