Lot 306 Dα

The oft-exhibited chalk drawing “Spaziergänger unter Bäumen” by August Macke is among the most outstanding sheets of his late graphic work. Not only does it combine various different individual motifs that are very well-known and characteristic for Macke, in its clear spatial construction and graphic style it displays a quality - as a sheet in black and white - that is equal to that of the paintings or watercolours. Comparable late drawings by Macke have been considered to be distinguished through a final “simplification of means”, which leads to an “expansively conceived painting-like effect” (Paul Vogt, Zum zeichnerischen Werk von Franz Marc und August Macke, in: exhib. cat. Pels-Leusden, Berlin 1977/1978, op. cit., p. 6). According to information provided by the editor of the catalogue raisonné, Ursula Heiderich, although “1912” was entered with the estate stamp, the sheet - based on its “motivic content, technique and style” - indubitably belongs to the Hilterfingen Period, which produced an extraordinary concentration of works in 1913/1914 and represents a particular highlight in his oeuvre, directly before the famous journey to Tunis in the summer of 1914.
As though quoting his own work, the mentioned motivic repertoire of the drawing encompasses the elegant urban couple and the shopwindow motif with reflective panes of glass and the hat display including its “Thun” marquee as well as figures strolling under the trees and leaning over a railing or parapet, calmly occupied with their view of and into an undefined distance. The suggested terrace complex of the composition recalls real topographies on the one hand - Fribourg for example (cf. “Kathedrale zu Freiburg in der Schweiz”; 1914; Heiderich 548) - on the other hand, the pair of men looking out from the parapet are connected with Macke's last painting, the “Abschied” of the Haubrich collection, an unfinished figural composition in which two large figures, who lean over and are seen from behind while they face to the right and are fragmented by the edge of the painting, provide the foreground with formal as well as highly symbolic weight (cf. Heiderich 590).
The spatial disposition of the “Spaziergänger unter Bäumen” is remarkable: in this drawing the pairs of figures, arranged in a triad-like series of layers, are placed at the levels of the foreground, middle ground and background. At the same time, clear gaps between the figures have been formed and views leading through the open space have been arranged. The composition is additionally articulated and framed through the emphasised verticals that meet with a horizontally oriented counterweight in the simplified architectonic contours of the city depicted in the background. “The shopwindow not only functions as an introduction into the image, it also provides the spatial continuum, which runs from the front right to the back left, with a transparent beginning [...]” writes Dierk Stemmler, who also feels that Macke has organised the space “not only perspectivally” but also “figurally lively” (cited in exhib. cat. Bonn 1979, op. cit., p. 268) and imparted it with a transparency as well as lightness, which are achieved not least through graphic stylistic devices like the light hatching in the reflective display windows - which seem entirely abstract - or through the feathery use of line in the dense crowns of the trees.
The artistic form and the atmosphere simultaneously elevate the image from the level of the concrete to that of the timeless and universal. “The sheet preserves a high intrinsic value of graphic beauty and encompasses a range of highly diverse nuances in its drawing, which render its subject calm. The figures, which seem to hover in their static dependency, arouse the impression that they seem to have been realised entirely in a state of being that is no longer of this world, as though they found themselves in a realm of their pure togetherness, increasingly illuminated by light” (Carl Bäufer, August Macke als Zeichner, in: exhib. cat. Münster 1957, op. cit. p. 46).