Sleeping Animals by Franz Marc

Looking at Sleeping Animals

Two animals rest close together near the lower edge of Franz Marc’s Sleeping Animals. Their heads and curved backs are gathered into a compact blue-grey shape, while much of the space above them is crossed by red, yellow, green and blue forms. The picture asks the viewer to find the resting bodies within a setting that is almost as active as the animals are still. The Schloßmuseum Murnau identifies the work as Schlafende Tiere (1913) and displays it on long-term loan from the KK-Stiftung Murnau. “Sleeping Animals” translates that title; it does not identify a series of separate pictures. ^[1]

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

Looking through the colour

The animals occupy the lower half of an upright composition. A blue head with a visible eye and pointed ear rests above a darker grey form. Curved lines make their bodies appear tucked in, but they do not isolate the pair from their surroundings. A slender orange line drops almost vertically across them. Around it, broad blue diagonals and smaller green and yellow areas make the background feel close and layered. The eye moves from the quiet centre to the energetic marks above it and back again. These observations come from the pictured work; the museum’s short display caption does not name the animals’ species. ^[1]

Artothek’s record gives the work as tempera, 43.8 × 38.7 cm. A separate image-archive caption specifies card as the support. That small scale matters to the way the image works: there is little empty space around the bodies, and the coloured planes fill nearly the whole sheet. The blue and grey forms can be read as sheltering one another, although the painting does not need a fixed story about their relationship. Its surface offers a contrast between repose and visual motion rather than a literal account of where the animals sleep. ^{[2] [3]}

Place in Marc’s work

The Murnau loan places Sleeping Animals among works associated with the artists of the Blue Rider circle. Marc helped edit the Der Blaue Reiter almanac with Wassily Kandinsky, and his animal subjects were central to his work in these years. The museum’s display context supports that historical placement; it does not prove that every colour or line in this individual work stands for a single prescribed idea. ^[1]

The upper red curves may suggest growth or movement, yet they do not resolve into a precise landscape feature. Likewise, the blue diagonals both frame and interrupt the resting animals. Marc lets recognisable bodies and less recognisable surroundings share the same picture space. That balance explains why the animals can seem concealed at first and settled once their contours have been found.

This 1913 work should also be distinguished from the differently composed Animals Resting, often dated 1912 in online image collections, and from Marc’s separate Sleeping Deer. Similar English titles can obscure distinct objects. Here the most useful starting point is the visible pair of tucked bodies beneath a restless canopy of colour. Their stillness becomes clear only after the viewer has worked through the surrounding shapes. ^{[1] [4]}