Indersdorf by Franz Marc

Franz Marc's "Indersdorf" is titled after a small municipality in Bavaria, Germany. At first glance, it depicts a tiny, thatch-roofed neighbourhood, with a small dock by the water where clothes hang

In the foreground the grass is a small, quaint patch of green, while darker yellow and auburn makes up a rolling hill in the background. No people are depicted, just the three buildings (one with many windows) where they might live.

There is relatively little in the picture to challenge this view of its basic makeup, but it is still highly impressionistic.

Is the building closest to the background a town hall, indicating a centre of society? Is it an apartment building, an oddity in this scene if there ever was one, or simply an abandoned manor that no one talks about? (The lack of people in the painting could lead one to see an aura of desertion, or avoidance, though the fresh-looking clothes on the railing indicate otherwise.)

Overall, the painting's warm colours and idyllic setting come together to make it a fairly inviting piece, pleasing to the eyes even before one makes homey interpretations of it. It matches Franz Marc's other works in that although highly impressionistic and to an extent even abstract, it is still grounded firmly in reality: it depicts a town, in much the same way as Marc's other works depict everyday things such as cats, rain, and so forth.

That being said, "Indersdorf" uses a realistic painting style that follows some of the plainest rules of artwork, such as proportion, which the painter's artwork does not always do. This makes it fairly unique about Marc's catalogue of more wild and subjective imagery.

Notably, this is one of Franz Marc's few cityscape paintings. One other, Village Street, exists, and depicts a much deeper nighttime setting, almost Halloweenesque (though there are naturally similarities between the two pieces).