Lot 27 Dα

August Macke dedicated this enchanting landscape view to his sister Auguste, and it was later owned by the family of his second sister, Ottilie Cordier.
This focused look at a natural motif reflects the impressionist influences absorbed by Macke during his stays in Paris in 1907 and 1908. It captures the effect of the sunlight on the snow and the tree’s bark in numerous delicate nuances of colour.
The painting belongs to a series of similar winterly depictions of delicate trees painted at Tegernsee in January 1910 (see Heiderich Gemälde 196-200). Fresh from their wedding, the artist and his wife Elisabeth arrived at Tegernsee at the end of October 1909: for one year this area would become the focal point of their lives. Numerous members of both families visited them, and the close friendship with Franz Marc also began there. Macke became extremely productive in his work as an artist, inspired by the idyllic nature surrounding him and his private happiness with his pregnant wife. “I am now terrifically at work. This means that, for me, working is a complete enjoyment of nature, the glow of the sun and the becoming of the trees, shrubs, people, animals, flowers and pots, tables, chairs, mountains and water on which it shines. I immerse myself in the cordial nodding of the snowdrops, in the rhythm of the twigs occupied by little birds, swaying in the sun […]” (August Macke, cited in: exh. cat. August Macke. Gemälde, Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Münster/Bonn/Munich 1986/1987, p. 160).