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 Three Horses
Franz Marc made Three Horses (Drei Pferde) in 1912 in gouache on card, measuring 33.5 × 47.5 cm. Christie’s records that Marc gave the work to Karl Ernst Osthaus, founder of the Folkwang Museum, that year. The title is easy to mistake for other groups of three horses, but this particular image shows red, grey and brown animals set into tightly curving colour bands. It is a work on paper, not the large 1911 oil painting Large Red Horses. [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
An English-language introduction to Marc’s blue horses, animals, spirituality and the Blue Rider.
Watch on YouTubeThree bodies, one rhythm
The horse at left lowers its head, while the middle grey horse bends toward the ground. A third, reddish animal rises behind them. Their bodies form a loose turn across the picture, picked up by broad yellow, blue and green arcs around them. The background is not a distant view separated from the animals: its curved shapes press close to their backs and legs. Looking from one animal to the next reveals how Marc built movement without showing a gallop. [1] [2]
Christie’s provenance traces the work through Folkwang and records its confiscation from that museum in 1937. Those ownership details identify this sheet and distinguish it from Marc’s many other horse studies. They also explain why a once public museum work later reached an auction catalogue. The catalogue is a historical record of the object, not evidence that its 2018 ownership remains current. [1]
Compare The Large Blue Horses: the animals there form a broad, calmly joined group. In Three Horses, smaller bodies and surrounding bands of colour make the scene more compressed. The comparison shows Marc returning to a subject while changing its scale, medium and pictorial tempo.
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
Three animals and the bands around them make a compact turning movement.
Reader Insights
Observation
Which body carries your eye from the foreground toward the upper horse?
Comparison
How does this gouache group move differently from Large Red Horses?
Interpretation
Do the colour bands feel more like landscape or an extension of the horses?
Join the Conversation
Which detail changed the way you saw this work? Share a close observation or a comparison with another Marc picture.
References
- Christie’s, Drei Pferde, lot 6155240. View source.
- Commons exact reproduction. 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, Drei Pferde (Three Horses), 1912, gouache on card, 33.5 × 47.5 cm. Exact Christie’s-sourced public-domain reproduction from Wikimedia Commons, resized without crop or colour change. Image file and rights.
,_1911_(48784088867).jpg){kind=link}