Red Deer I by Franz Marc

Looking at Red Deer I

Four red deer move among trees in Franz Marc’s Red Deer I. The existing “Red Deer Grazing” page shows this painting, known in German as Rote Rehe I. The Heidi Horten Collection identifies it as a 1910 oil on canvas, 88.3 × 87.6 cm, inventory K-98. Two deer occupy the middle of the picture; the animals at the outer edges are partly cut off by the frame. The collection describes the group as a quiet image of deer at ease in a wooded landscape. ^{[1] [2]}

Watch: Franz Marc

Explore Marc’s blue horses, the Blue Rider circle and the move towards abstraction in English-language videos.

Franz Marc, Blue Horses and Der Blaue Reiter

The Canvas

An English-language introduction to Marc’s blue horses, animals, spirituality and the Blue Rider.

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▶01 · Marc and his horsesFranz Marc, Blue Horses and Der Blaue ReiterThe Canvas▶02 · The Blue RiderWho were the Blue Rider?Tate▶03 · Towards abstractionThe Case for AbstractionThe Art Assignment · PBS Digital Studios

Four deer, one linked group

The nearest deer stands across the lower centre, its back sloping down toward the right. Another turns its neck around a narrow tree at the left. The remaining two are placed farther back, one partially lost at each side. Their red bodies repeat across the square surface, while their heads point in different directions. Green and blue trunks lean toward each other above the middle pair, making an opening toward the yellow and orange hills. These repeated curves and directions hold the scene together without making the deer move as one herd. ^[1]

The painting offers no detailed forest floor. Coloured bands create the setting, and the deer appear within them as clearly defined forms. Their cropped bodies make the scene feel as if it continues beyond the square canvas. The collection guide notes this frieze-like effect and the counterbalancing arch of the two trees. The title Red Deer I distinguishes this work from Marc’s later Red Deer II, which has a different arrangement and is also covered in this cluster. ^[1]

A documented journey

The collection’s provenance account traces the picture through several owners, including the Guggenheim Foundation, before Heidi Horten acquired it in 1998. Its present identification as K-98 therefore refers to the Horten Collection, not to the Guggenheim's former inventory number. ^[2]

Compare the repeated bodies here with the single animal in Red Deer or with the more fractured shapes of Deer in the Forest I. The image used on this page is a public-domain art-book scan, so differences from the collection’s displayed photograph should not be read as changes in the painting itself. ^[3]