Bathing Girls with Town in the Background

The style used by Macke in the painting, Bathing Girls with Town in the Background, will immediately remind many of famous paintings by Franz Marc. This may be a lesser known from Macke's career but is still a particularly intriguing piece.

The way in which form is created through shapes of colour shows a clear similarity to the work of his fellow German colleague and represented a slightly different approach to how August Macke normally delivered his portraits. This painting features a limited palette, with just yellows, greens, browns and blues used across the entire composition. The female figures are easy to spot in this scene, with trees and foliage placed around them to frame the overall painting.

A woman in the nearest foreground has her back turned to us and is looking at the other women who are placed more centrally. Several repetitions of the same figure, or perhaps just similar looking friends, have light brown hair and light coloured skin. The rest of the scene is slightly darker and leads the eye deliberately to the women in the middle of the composition. The title of the painting mentions a town in the background but it is much harder to spot this element of the scene, as it is partly covered by the swirling branches of this forest.

Sadly, not too much about this painting is known to art historians, at least that has been translated into English. There maybe some more available on it through older publications on the artist, but most recent focus has been on some of his more famous works. The style and content of this artwork would probably allow those knowledgeable about his career to be able to date it fairly accurately and also suggest the likely location of this scene. This would be achieved by comparing it to other paintings from across his career.