About the Artwork
In this painting, the bodies of bovine animals –– at least three of them, grazing the grass in the foreground and lying asleep in the distance –– merge with the surrounding landscape composed of intensely colored prismatic shapes. The red, blue, and yellow forms burst from their point of origin in the upper right corner with the explosive energy that unites the animals, terrain, and plants in harmony.
Franz Marc rejected the dominance of rationalism and materialism that came with a rapid modernisation of Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century. Instead, he turned to nature as a source of the spiritual power and made animals a main motif of his painting. Marc depicted animals in strong hues, according to his belief in symbolic correspondences between individual colors and specific spiritual states, understood by him in a gendered way. For Marc, red connoted the brutal power of primal material forces; blue was spiritual and masculine; and yellow was sensual and feminine.
Animals in a Landscape
1914
Franz Marc
1880-1916
German
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Oil on canvas
Unframed: 43 3/8 × 39 1/4 inches (110.2 × 99.7 cm) Framed: 46 7/8 × 43 × 2 1/4 inches (119.1 × 109.2 × 5.7 cm)
Paintings
European Modern Art to 1970
Gift of Robert H. Tannahill
56.144
Copyright Not Evaluated
Markings
Signed, lower right: M.
Inscribed, handwritten in pencil, verso: Bilt mit Rindern 1914 | verkauflich | nach Berlin
Label, verso: Kestner Gesellschaft Hannover 1936 | Bes. M. Marc | aus Dresden von Probst | Bilt mit Ridern 1914 Label, verso: Buchholz Gallery | Curt Valentin | 32 East 57th Street, New York "Cattle in Jungle" "Franz Marc" "Robert Tannahill" "Detroit"
Provenance
1936-1956, Robert H. Tannahill [1893-1969] (Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, USA);1956-present, gift to the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)
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Provenance pageExhibition History
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The exhibition history of a number of objects in our collection only begins after their acquisition by the museum, and may reflect an incomplete record.
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Franz Marc: Gedachtnis-Ausstellung. Exh. cat., Neue Munchener Secession. Munich, 1916, no. 145.
Franz Marc: Gedachtnis-Ausstellung. Exh. cat., Kestner-Gesellschaft. Hannover, 1936, no. 56.
Franz Marc Exhibition. Exh. cat., Bucholz Gallery. New York, 1940, no. 23.
Exh. cat., Germanic Museum. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1941, no. 409.1940.
Bulletin of the DIA 36, 3 (1956-1957): p. 74.
Art Quarterly 20, 3 (1957): p. 225 (ill.).
Selz, P. German Expressionist Painting. Berkeley, 1957, p. 307.
Uhr, H. Masterpieces of German Expressionism at the Detroit Institute of Arts. New York, 1982, p. 156 (ill.).
Dillenberger, John, ed. Paul Tillich on Art and Architecture. New York, 1987, pp. viii-ix (ill.).
Hopfengaart, Christine. Der Blaue Reiter. Exh. cat., Kunsthalle Bremen. Bremen, 2000, p. 115, no. 30 (ill.).
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Credit Line for Reproduction
Franz Marc, Animals in a Landscape, 1914, oil on canvas. Detroit Institute of Arts, Gift of Robert H. Tannahill, 56.144.
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