First Animals by Franz Marc

Created by one of the then foremost German expressionists, Franz Marc, The First Animals is a cubist depiction of four, boldly coloured horses.

Created in 1913, when Marc was around thirty-three years old, the piece came two years before his change in emotional perspective, after which, according to letters he wrote at the time, he could no longer see the beauty in the animals he painted, and only three years before his death, on the front lines of WWI.

Of all of Marc's works, of which there are sixty, at least as far as we know, The First Animals seems to be one of his least known works, with information on it sparse, and hard to find.

At just over sixty centimeters diagonally, it's smaller than the majority of is works, though is still far larger than his smallest, The Small Horse Picture, for example, less than half that size.

Marc's remains popular, with prints of The First Animals, in the original size, often going for more than two hundred dollars, which I think shows a more true value, because they are being bought for the love of the work, as oppose to his originals, bought because they are collectable, or investments, which go for tens, or hundreds of millions of dollars.

Interestingly, handmade oil painting reproductions can also be purchased, for several thousand dollars, of course.

The First Animals is an excellent example of the original emotion with which Marc saw animals. Void of any of the ugliness of humans, he worked to enhance his ability to depict the "organic rhythm" that he saw in the animals he painted.

The cubist style with which he was experimenting in this, and other of his pieces, works to heighten the emotion, and the realism of the piece.