Lot 28 Dα

This painting from the best period of August Macke’s oeuvre uniquely condenses a figural painting and landscape into an energetic, museum-quality work.
Macke uses repeatedly overlapping shapes, interlocking diagonals and occasional hatching applied in vigorous strokes, to reproduce the shimmering play of light and dense vegetation of a summery forest. Painter and viewer directly and abundantly perceive the innumerable sensory impressions from the reflected light, shadows and constantly shifting coloured surfaces. The central figures, two children playing with their goat, form a pole of calm within this vibrant setting.
The chromatic relationships which integrate the figures into their surroundings and intensify the dynamic effect are remarkable: the blue of their clothing can be found in a somewhat darker tone in the shadows of the tree trunks, but the correlation between the red of the dress and the flickering, reflected light in the wooded background is particularly striking.
This work unites numerous stylistic influences experienced and absorbed by Macke at this time – the isolation of individual elements drawn from early French cubism transitions into the dynamic, staccato-like fragmentation which he encountered in the works of the Italian futurists in 1912. Macke also saw the works of Robert Delaunay at this time, and they left a deep impression on him. With the usage of the coloured forms he creates an abstract network of shapes which give a threedimensional depth to the painting which pulls us into the scene.
The depicted children are Lisbeth and Franz Steinheuer, both of whom lived in the neighbourhood of the Macke family’s home on Bonn’s Bornheimer Straße. The painter dealt with the same theme in a preparatory work in gouache from the same year: it shows the children and the animal in a concentrated view depicted in a two-dimensional and reductive manner (Heiderich 409).
The year after our picture was created, Macke took up its motif once again in the painting “Kinder mit Ziege” (Heiderich 520). In this case, the subject is realised in harmonious, two-dimensional forms that invest the motif with a strong sense of calm and order, and the powerful immediacy that distinguishes our work becomes lost.