82.17 Elisabeth reading with a bowl of fruit

ca. 1908

Pastel, 12 1/2 x 13 3/8" (31.7 x 33.5 cm)

Provenance: Elisabeth, Erdmann-Macke; Wolfgang Macke

This calm and lovely view of Macke’s wife is exemplary of the many pastel studies he completed between 1907 an 1909. In her memoirs of their life together, Elisabeth Macke-Erdmann writes that he preferred to have her pose for him than to hire a professional model. His work at the time consisted predominantly of such quiet interior scenes. In style, these studies indicate Macke’s discovery, while in Paris, of Dega’s pastels. In a letter to Elisabeth from Paris in June 1907, he writes with enthusiasm about this latest inspiration: “By the way, do you know Degas? In the book about Paris there are a few things by him. They are mostly small pastel drawings, but I am irresistibly attracted to them. They are in each stroke more original than anything I have ever seen. Since I have been here, he affects me constantly”

The composition of the work certainly demonstrates Macke’s understanding and adaptation of Dega’s impressionist technique. He depicts Elisabeth as if seen from above and crops the view to give the effect of capturing a spontaneous moment- two devices that Dega mastered most effectively in his pastels. The pastel medium lends itself especially to a depiction of soft interior light, an effect which was Macke’s main concern in these studies of Elisabeth.

By the summer of 1911, Macke was beginning to overcome his earlier Impressionist leanings. Inspired by the works of Matisse which he had seen in Munich and by the other avant-garde art he learned about through Franz Marc, Macke began to experiment with broader expanses of color and less tonal modeling of his figures and landscapes. This watercolor is an example of his transitional period, before he had explored the possibilities of Cubism and before he had devised his own characteristic style. Thematically, the work related quite directly to other more ambitious paintings completed by Macke in his garden in Bonn in the summer of 1911. The dog in the front must be Mackes’ beloved shepherd, Wolf, about whom Elisabeth writes in her memoirs, Erinnerung and August Macke.

By 1912, Macke began to wrestle in his own works with the radical innovations presented by the Cubists. Paintings from the period immediately before the Sonderbund exhibition in May of that year indicate that Macke was making a conscious effort to understand Picasso’s and Braque’s paintings of 1908 and 1909. Macke’s works became more geometrical, with emphasis on simple forms and less concern for the large color fields he had preferred the year before. Despite these experimental formulations and Macke’s enthusiastic reception of Picasso’s ideas, he never embraced analytical Cubism entirely; he was always much too interested in color to give precedent to form.

Of greatest significance in his confrontation with Cubist fragmentation was his recognition of the works of the Frenchman Robert Delaunay. Both Macke and Marc were deeply impressed with Delaunay’s “orphic” paintings, which they saw at the Blaue Reiter exhibition in January 1912 and again on their trip to Paris in October of that year. Delaunay’s emphasis on spectral tonalities appealed immediately to Macke’s coloristic predilections. Macke’s Cubist forms then, are most accurately a combination and interpretation of Picasso’s geometric analysis and Delaunay’s color. One sees the influence of both artists in Macke’s series of major works after 1912, the views of lovers in a garden and the color scenes of the Zoological Gardens in Bonn.

This drawing is obviously one of many studies Macke did for these larger paintings. All of his favored motifs are evident: the bowler hats, the geometric trees, the cross-hatched sky to represent light and shadow among the leaves.

Macke kept sketchbooks throughout his life, in which he developed ideas for future paintings or simply experimented with new forms. This sketch was taken from the notebook he made staying on Lake Thun in Switzerland. The Mackes spent the last months of 1913 and the first months of 1914 in that picturesque setting. The many sketches produced at that time point to Macke’s increasing interest in the theme of shop windows- a motif that offered light and to play with the idea (as Matisse also had) or the interaction of interior and exterior space.