Zwei Männer mit Frau (klein)
Watercolour and pencil, 1913.
Vriesen 297, Heiderich Aquarelle 393. Verso inscribed "2 Männer mit Frau". Verso on the passe-partout with the estate stamp and the handwritten estate number "91" and with the inscription "August Macke, Aquarelle aus der Schweiz 1913, Zwei Männer mit Frau (klein)". On laid paper. 17,8 x 12,7 cm (7 x 5 inch ), the full sheet.
The motif was repeatedly included in other compositions, as in the watercolour "Mit gelber Jacke" (H. Aquarelle 394), dated 1913, and in the chalk drawing "Promenade" (H. Zeichnungen 2099), executed in the same year .

Origin: Von Kiemannsegg, Essen 1922/23.
Walter Schüler, Berlin 1948.
Private collection Berlin.
Galerie Pels-Leusden, Berlin 1977/78.
Private collection South Germany.

Exhibition: Gedächtnis-Ausstellung August Macke, Kunstverein Frankfurt/M., 1920, Cat.no. 16.
Gedächtnis-Ausstellung August Macke, Museum Wiesbaden, Nassauischer Kunstverein/Wiesbadener Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst, 1920, Cat.no. 16
Macke, Aquarell-Ausstellung, Städtisches Kunsthaus Bielefeld, 1957, Cat.no. 297, ill. p. 37.
Franz Marc - August Macke, Galerie Pels-Leusden, Berlin 1977/78, Cat.no. 93.

Literature: Wolfgang Macke, August Macke - Aquarelle, Munich 1958, no. 1 (with colour ill.).
Janice Mary McCullagh, August Macke and the Vision of Paradise: An Iconographic Analysis, Diss. Austin (Texas) 1980, p. 143, ill. 118, p. 261.
Janice Mary McGullagh, The Element of Time in August Macke's Urban Paradise, in: Art's Magazine, September issue, New York 1981, p. 141.

After a time of intense artistic exchange in the circle of the "Blaue Reiter", August Macke distances himself increasingly from Marc and Kandinsky in his view of art and intends to make a new start in peace and tranquillity. And so, following an intense period of exhibition activity, including organising and participating in the "Erste Deutsche Herbstsalon" in Berlin in 1913, he seeks an escape from the cultural life of Berlin at Lake Thun. Here, the artist looks back on his creative work to date, which allows him to move towards a new departure. The presence of his family, spending time with friends and the closeness of nature make his stay in Hilterfingen a period in Macke's life that he looks back on with great happiness. It is the right environment to "wonder at the world in all its beauties" (Heiderich Aquarelle, p. 35), in line with his mature view of himself as a painter. During his time in Hilterfingen, Macke's use of water colours blossoms. Here, he spontaneously processes the new landscape and architectural motifs in characteristic sequences from sketch-type drawings through the water colour, and varies his pictorial inventiveness in an almost serial development. This "family of works" also includes the motifs of walks in the open air, passers-by on the street and people looking into shop windows, which he combines in ever new ways. Influenced by the model of nature and with massive creative force, shapes and colours are refined and developed in the water colours of this time. A "great, uninterrupted love of life radiates back from the works of art, it remained undamaged during the artist's short life, and it will remain alive as long as these works of art exist." (Heiderich, p. 35). [AS]