by Tom Gurney
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Published on June 19, 2020 / Updated on October 17, 2026
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
Looking at Stables
In Stables (Stallungen), painted in 1913, horses appear between vivid, intersecting shapes rather than in a stable shown as a conventional room. The Guggenheim Museum owns this long, horizontal oil painting. Its collection record and an exhibition account identify the horse motif, while a public-domain photograph of the full canvas supplies the visual evidence for its crowded composition. [1] [2] [3]
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
An English-language introduction to Marc’s blue horses, animals, spirituality and the Blue Rider.
Watch on YouTubeFinding the horses
A pale horse occupies the upper left. Farther right, curved patches of blue, red and yellow suggest other bodies, partly absorbed by the bars and arches of the setting. Vertical darks and bright diagonals interrupt a straightforward reading from one animal to the next. The long format encourages the eye to travel across the surface, discovering forms rather than meeting a single central figure. [3]
The Guggenheim Bilbao's exhibition text places Stables beside Kandinsky's Painting with White Border as two 1913 works in which the horse motif could carry the Blue Rider circle's interest in change and spiritual possibility. That is a curatorial comparison, not proof that every curve in Marc's painting represents a horse. Looking closely, we can follow how stable architecture, animal bodies and colour planes compete for the same space. [2]
Compare The Large Blue Horses, where a three-horse group is immediately recognisable, or The Fate of the Animals, where a fractured setting presses even more urgently upon the animals. Stables belongs to the period in which Marc kept identifiable creatures in view while making the whole picture move through interlocking colour and line.
Artwork Directory
This source-checked selection contains 192 identified works and print designs from the current Franz Marc research set. It is a curated selection, not a complete catalogue raisonné. Some works link to their article here; others link to a collection record. Unresolved identifications are omitted.
Discussion
Look for the horses before you decide how the stable space is built around them.
Reader Insights
Observation
Which horse do you recognise first, and which colour or edge reveals it?
Comparison
How does this crowded horizontal picture differ from a clearly grouped horse painting?
Interpretation
Where do architecture and animal bodies become hardest to separate?
Join the Conversation
Which detail changed the way you saw this work? Share a close observation or a comparison with another Marc picture.
References
- Guggenheim object record. View source.
- Guggenheim Bilbao, Kandinsky in Context. View source.
- Commons exact image. View source.
- Related artwork image, Yellow Cow: Photograph by Dr. Alexey Yakovlev; resized without crop or colour change, CC BY-SA 2.0.
- Splash image: Franz Marc, Stables, 1913, oil on canvas. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Public-domain photograph from Wikimedia Commons, resized without crop or colour change. Image file and rights.
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