Franz Marc valuation
Painted horses and deer in blue and yellow because he trusted animals more than people, and died at Verdun.
Franz Marc was born in Munich in 1880, studied theology before painting, and founded the Blaue Reiter with Kandinsky in 1911.
What a work by Franz Marc is worth
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation is free, made online from the photographs you send, and it commits you to nothing. We act for sellers across the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States.
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Bio
Franz Marc was born in Munich in 1880, studied theology before painting, and founded the Blaue Reiter with Kandinsky in 1911. He built a private colour theory in which blue was masculine and spiritual, yellow feminine and gentle, red brutal and material, and applied it to animals — horses, deer, foxes, cows — because he considered them purer than human beings and a better subject for painting. The work moved towards near-abstraction in 1913 and 1914. He was conscripted at the outbreak of war, named on a list of artists to be withdrawn from the front, and was killed by a shell splinter at Verdun in March 1916, aged thirty-six.
The output is small because the career was short, and the major paintings are almost entirely in museums, so what comes to market is chiefly works on paper — watercolours, gouaches, drawings and the postcards he sent to friends — and the woodcuts, which are few and are catalogued by Lankheit. Provenance across 1933 to 1945 must be checked, since Marc was declared degenerate and works were confiscated. Forgeries of the watercolours are a known problem, and expert opinion is normally required.
At a glance
- Born
- 8 February 1880, Kreuzstraße
- Died
- 4 March 1916, Braquis
- Movement
- Expressionism
More on Wikipedia.
The postcards, the lost Tower and the catalogue
Between 1912 and 1914 Marc sent the poet Else Lasker-Schüler dozens of small postcards painted in watercolour, mostly of animals, addressed to her imagined persona Prince Jussuf. One of them shows The Tower of Blue Horses, the large painting of 1913 that was removed from the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, included in the Degenerate Art exhibition of 1937, and has been missing since 1945.
The current reference is the three-volume catalogue raisonné by Annegret Hoberg and Isabelle Jansen, published between 2004 and 2011, which follows Klaus Lankheit's catalogue of 1970 and covers the oil paintings, the works on paper and postcards, and the sketchbooks and prints. A watercolour, drawing or postcard should be found there, and one that is not needs expert opinion before it is offered.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
