Beschreibung:

PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED BRITISH COLLECTION FRANZ MARC (1880-1916) Pferd with the signature 'F. Marc' (lower left) gouache, brush, ink and pencil on paper laid on board 36.7 x 42.9cm (14 7/16 x 16 7/8in). Executed in 1912 Fußnoten Provenance Sir Michael Ernest Sadler Collection, Leeds & Oxford (by December 1934). Michael Sadleir Collection (born Michael Thomas Harvey Sadler), Bisley (by descent from the above in 1943). F. A. Drey Collection, London (acquired from the above by March 1944 from The Leicester Galleries, London, exhibition of Sadler's collection). E. J. Norton Collection, London (circa 1950s). Thence by descent to the present owner. Exhibited London, New Burlington Galleries, Exhibition of Twentieth Century German Art, (organised by Sir Herbert Read), July 1938, no. 171. London, The Leicester Galleries, Selected Paintings Drawings and Sculpture from the Collection of the late Sir Michael Sadler K.C.S.I., C.B., LL.D., 7 January - 10 February 1944, no. 59. Literature M. L. Hutchinson, Catalogue of Pictures, Drawings, Prints & Sculpture in the possession of Sir Michael Sadler at The Rookery, Headington near Oxford, Vol. I, December 1934, p. 77. Pferd is a large work on paper by Franz Marc depicting his most defining and symbolic motif. Realised at the height of Marc's involvement with the Blaue Reiter group, the work issues from his celebrated series of animal paintings in which the artist synthesised his deeply spiritualised world view with radical developments in his formal language. Unseen in public for over 70 years, Pferd is also distinguished by important, early provenance and exhibition history where, since its creation in 1912, it has resided exclusively in notable private collections. The first owner of Pferd was the leading twentieth century educationalist, collector and patron of modern art, Michael Ernest Sadler. During the early decades of the 1900s, Sadler, thanks to his wife's largesse, amassed a collection of contemporary art which was unrivalled anywhere in England during the early years of the twentieth century. The collection included works by Pablo Picasso Amedeo Modigliani and Wassily Kandinsky, amongst many others. Sadler even owned Paul Gauguin's highly influential painting Vision after the Sermon now at the Scottish National Gallery. Most significantly, Sadler and his son, Michael Thomas Harvey Sadler (later known as Michael Sadleir to distinguish himself from his father), became the first champions and patrons of the Blaue Reiter group in England, a cause which was nurtured by their well-documented friendship with Wassily Kandinsky and his wife and fellow member of the group, Gabriele Münter Sadler and his son were first introduced to the work of Kandinsky in 1911, on the occasion of Frank Rutter's Allied Artist's Association Exhibition at the Royal Albert Hall. The aim of the AAA was to break the power of the Royal Academy by allowing subscribers to exhibit their works without prior submission to a jury. Kandinsky, as yet unknown in England, proposed some woodcuts to exhibition which were seen and purchased by Sadler's son. The encounter was to prompt Sadleir to make Kandinsky's acquaintance and, following an exchange of letters (now in the Tate Archive), Kandinsky invited father and son to visit him at his country residence near the town of Murnau, south of Munich. In the summer of 1912 both men departed for Germany where they embarked upon a voracious picture-buying tour. In Murnau, the Sadlers were so enthralled by Kandinksy's conversations concerning the Religious and Mystical in art that they missed the last train to Munich and were forced to stay overnight at the station hotel. Sadler even commented in a letter to his wife on the 17th August 1912 that 'Kandinsky lent us nightshirts, a hair brush and some soap' (M. E. Sadler quoted in M. Sadleir, Michael Ernest Sadler (Sir Michael Sadler, K.C.S.I.) 1861-1943, A memoir by his son, London, 1949, p. 239). The meeting however was to f