Lot Essay
This very accomplished painting is the work of an artist entirely in control of his metier. It is in many ways a perfect synthesis of Macke's many experiments of previous years and also a fusion of the many artistic influences he had experienced between 1912 and 1914.
In 1912 Macke saw the pivotal Italian Futurist exhibition organised by Herwarth Walden at Galerie der Sturm in Berlin. The impact of this exhibition on the German avant-garde and the Blaue Reiter in particular was phenomenal. The young Germans were confronted by paintings which were quintessentially different to the conformist impressionist pictures of Liebermann or Corinth and even more explosive than the Dangast pictures of the Brücke: here were complex, intellectual pictures filled with radiant lines, colour, movement and a completely new language of two dimensional space. Notable Futurist pictures in the Sturm exhibition included Boccioni's Visioni Simultanee (Balla, no. 423), in the Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum, Hannover, and Carra's I Funerali Dell'Anarchico Galli (C. 8/11) in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Writing to Eberhard Grisebach in March 1913 Macke remembered, "Man hat nie fallende Regentropfen in der Luft stehend dargestellt, sondern als Streifen (die Höhlenbewohner zeichneten die Rentierherden schon so). Nun malt man eine rüttelnde Droschke, flimmernde Lichter, tanzende Menschen so (man sieht Bewegungen so). Das ist der ganze, furchtbar einfache Futurismus". From the Futurists Macke (and Marc) learnt the importance of dramatic light effects and the way to convey movement in two-dimension.
Shortly afterwards, in late 1912, Marc and Macke visited Robert Delaunay in Paris. Delaunay's work was already familiar to them as were his avant-garde theories regarding pictoral composition and the new language of "Orphism".
Macke's subsequent trip to Tunis with Klee and Moillet mark the final stage in his development before his short burst of mature activity in Bonn in the summer of 1914. Macke spent some ten weeks on this momentous trip recalling "Wir liegen in der Sonne, essen Spargel etc. Dabei kann man sich herumdrehen und hat tausende von Motiven, ich habe heute schon sicher 50 Skizzen gemacht. Gestern 25. Es geht wie der Teufel und ich bin in einer Arbeitsfreude, wie ich sie nie gekannt habe. Die afrikanische Landschaft ist noch viel schöner wie die Provence. Ich hätte mir das nie vorgestellt. (...) Ich glaube, ich bringe kolossal viel Material heim, was ich dann in Bonn erst verabeiten kann".
What Macke brought home with him was a style much changed from the rather formal compositions of 1912. In Tunis he has learnt from Klee the wonderful deftness of touch of the Swiss painter. This softening of Macke's line and palette had much to do with Klee's insistence that he should work in watercolour.
At the beginning of June Macke returned to Bonn with his wife Elisabeth where in a period of only a few weeks he painted many of his most important canvases. He adapted his painting method to accommodate the subtleties of painting in watercolour devising a feathering technique of applying paint which at once gave extraordinary surface and subtlety to his canvases. Moreover, as we see here in Paar am Gartentisch, Macke began to use a combination of hot and very rich colours to fill his canvasses with strong contrasts and a radiance surpassing even the bravest experiments of Robert Delaunay.
For a tragically short period of less than two months Macke painted a series of wonderful pictures which are filled with light, colour and an extraordinary sense of confidence. The most successful of these depict scenes around Bonn, in its parks and city streets (see fig. 4). Examples of these are housed in museums such as Park am Wasser (G. 106) in the Sprengel Museum, Hannover, and Hutladen (G. 113) in the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich.
On the 4th August 1914 the First World War broke out and Macke was drafted into the German army. On the 26th September he fell at Perthe-les-Hurles in Champagne leaving the Bonn works of the summer of 1914 as his last major series of paintings.
Purchased through Siegfried Adler by Hans Ravenborg some twenty-seven years ago, Paar am Gartentisch has featured as a centrepiece in several major exhibitions from its first showing at the Kestner-Gesellschaft in 1918 to the major retrospective at the Städtisches Museum, Bonn in 1987.
In 1912 Macke saw the pivotal Italian Futurist exhibition organised by Herwarth Walden at Galerie der Sturm in Berlin. The impact of this exhibition on the German avant-garde and the Blaue Reiter in particular was phenomenal. The young Germans were confronted by paintings which were quintessentially different to the conformist impressionist pictures of Liebermann or Corinth and even more explosive than the Dangast pictures of the Brücke: here were complex, intellectual pictures filled with radiant lines, colour, movement and a completely new language of two dimensional space. Notable Futurist pictures in the Sturm exhibition included Boccioni's Visioni Simultanee (Balla, no. 423), in the Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum, Hannover, and Carra's I Funerali Dell'Anarchico Galli (C. 8/11) in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Writing to Eberhard Grisebach in March 1913 Macke remembered, "Man hat nie fallende Regentropfen in der Luft stehend dargestellt, sondern als Streifen (die Höhlenbewohner zeichneten die Rentierherden schon so). Nun malt man eine rüttelnde Droschke, flimmernde Lichter, tanzende Menschen so (man sieht Bewegungen so). Das ist der ganze, furchtbar einfache Futurismus". From the Futurists Macke (and Marc) learnt the importance of dramatic light effects and the way to convey movement in two-dimension.
Shortly afterwards, in late 1912, Marc and Macke visited Robert Delaunay in Paris. Delaunay's work was already familiar to them as were his avant-garde theories regarding pictoral composition and the new language of "Orphism".
Macke's subsequent trip to Tunis with Klee and Moillet mark the final stage in his development before his short burst of mature activity in Bonn in the summer of 1914. Macke spent some ten weeks on this momentous trip recalling "Wir liegen in der Sonne, essen Spargel etc. Dabei kann man sich herumdrehen und hat tausende von Motiven, ich habe heute schon sicher 50 Skizzen gemacht. Gestern 25. Es geht wie der Teufel und ich bin in einer Arbeitsfreude, wie ich sie nie gekannt habe. Die afrikanische Landschaft ist noch viel schöner wie die Provence. Ich hätte mir das nie vorgestellt. (...) Ich glaube, ich bringe kolossal viel Material heim, was ich dann in Bonn erst verabeiten kann".
What Macke brought home with him was a style much changed from the rather formal compositions of 1912. In Tunis he has learnt from Klee the wonderful deftness of touch of the Swiss painter. This softening of Macke's line and palette had much to do with Klee's insistence that he should work in watercolour.
At the beginning of June Macke returned to Bonn with his wife Elisabeth where in a period of only a few weeks he painted many of his most important canvases. He adapted his painting method to accommodate the subtleties of painting in watercolour devising a feathering technique of applying paint which at once gave extraordinary surface and subtlety to his canvases. Moreover, as we see here in Paar am Gartentisch, Macke began to use a combination of hot and very rich colours to fill his canvasses with strong contrasts and a radiance surpassing even the bravest experiments of Robert Delaunay.
For a tragically short period of less than two months Macke painted a series of wonderful pictures which are filled with light, colour and an extraordinary sense of confidence. The most successful of these depict scenes around Bonn, in its parks and city streets (see fig. 4). Examples of these are housed in museums such as Park am Wasser (G. 106) in the Sprengel Museum, Hannover, and Hutladen (G. 113) in the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich.
On the 4th August 1914 the First World War broke out and Macke was drafted into the German army. On the 26th September he fell at Perthe-les-Hurles in Champagne leaving the Bonn works of the summer of 1914 as his last major series of paintings.
Purchased through Siegfried Adler by Hans Ravenborg some twenty-seven years ago, Paar am Gartentisch has featured as a centrepiece in several major exhibitions from its first showing at the Kestner-Gesellschaft in 1918 to the major retrospective at the Städtisches Museum, Bonn in 1987.