Wassily Kandinsky and his companion Gabriele Münter set out on another extended journey in early December 1905, this time to the coast of Liguria, where they spent half a year in Rapallo from December 23, 1905, to June 30, 1906. This was a seminal time for the artist: “New subjects found their way into his work, his style changed in with new colors and light, and new impressions stimulated his imagination” (Vivian E. Barnett, in: Das bunte Leben. Wassily Kandinsky im Lenbachhaus, Munich 1995, p. 127). These characteristics become evident in our small painting, too. While he had previously used the contrast between the black ground and the colorful brushwork in a manner more akin to Art Nouveau in his fairytale-like narratives, Kandinsky depicts the atmospheric image of a colorfully illuminated boat in the pitch-black night in the present work. It is an extraordinary piece for this period, as he mostly created depictions of landscapes and the sea by day. In this small painting, however, Kandinsky did not choose an impressionist palette but a range of colors that pointed the way to the bold spectrum he would first use in his breakthrough paintings from Murnau two years later. The clear, bright colors become independent, creating a glowing center in the nighttime calm. The artistic variations Kandinsky tried out here would later come to full fruition in his paintings from the Murnau period.