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 14, 2023
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
The Golden Sail by Wassily Kandinsky: Introduction
A small red boat sits at the edge of a wide, dark sweep of water. Above it rises a yellow-gold sail, carrying a white flower-like emblem against a black circle. Across the water, steep roofs, trees and coloured windows make a shore that looks both familiar and imagined. This is Wassily Kandinsky's Das Goldene Segel (The Golden Sail), made in 1903. It is a colour print, not an oil painting. The reproduction on this page shows a particular impression in Munich's Lenbachhaus, inventory GMS 224. Its museum record describes how black and coloured printing blocks, followed by gold tone on the sail, produced the strong contrast that holds the scene together. [1].
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Watch on YouTubeAt a Glance
- Artist:Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944).
- Title:Das Goldene Segel (The Golden Sail).
- Date:1903.
- Object shown:a colour print made from one black block and a multicolour block; gold tone on the sail was applied with a stencil or block.
- Size:12.7 × 29.7 cm for the printed work recorded by the museum.
- Collection:Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München, Gabriele Münter Stiftung, GMS 224.
- Image:the museum marks its downloadable reproduction CC0 1.0.
Where this work sits in Kandinsky’s career
The Blue Rider
1903The Golden Sail
1903Composition VII
1913Composition VIII
1923Several Circles
1926Sky Blue
1940Contents
- Looking from the shore to the sail
- How was The Golden Sail made?
- Are all impressions the same?
- An early Kandinsky image
- Why does the early print matter?
- Frequently asked questions
- References
Looking from the shore to the sail
The print is unusually wide for its height. Its long shape allows the shoreline to run across the picture, but the curve of the water keeps the view from feeling flat. The far bank begins close to the left edge and slopes towards the boat. Pale grey marks trace its border. Inside that boundary, black dominates. Houses, windows, tree trunks and scattered patches of blue and green emerge in fragments. We recognise a place without being given a fully described town.
At left, two high triangular roofs create a pair of sharp silhouettes. Their repeated sloping sides make the buildings feel joined, even though their windows and coloured details differ. Narrow verticals rise behind them and across the shore. They can be read as trunks or posts; in either case they break the roofs into smaller intervals. Near the middle, blue and pale green shapes appear between these dark bars. The colour is placed sparingly enough that each patch becomes an event.
The bank then curves forward. That line leads the eye to the small red boat, where a figure in green appears to tend the sail. The boat's hull is a narrow band of red and black. Its prow stretches to the right, near a red upright mark. Several little pale circles sit behind the figure, and their repetition gives the vessel an ornamental quality. The water beneath remains mostly black, with a few light strokes and reflections. Kandinsky has not filled the river with continuous blue. The dark expanse gives the bright boat space to register.
The sail is the largest single form. It bows outward, reaching from the boat to the top of the print. Its gold colour differs from the cooler, small accents on the shore. A circular black device, ringed with white petal-like shapes, interrupts the sail near the top. The little green centre answers the figure's green, while the white shapes echo pale marks along the bank. Those relationships make the sail feel connected to the rest of the scene even as it stands apart from it.
Looking again, the balance becomes clearer. The shore is made of many little incidents; the sail is one broad, bright shape. The scene could have become crowded with details, yet the near-empty black water and the clear curve of the bank separate its two halves. The title names the sail because it is the point where the eye gathers what it has seen elsewhere: gold against darkness, curved form against angular roofs, and a small human journey set within an expansive setting.
How was The Golden Sail made?
The Lenbachhaus describes its impression as a print from one block in black and another block used for several colours. The gold tone on the sail was applied by stencil or by a block; the museum leaves those two possibilities open. Its description is more exact than calling the object a painting or saying that all of the colour was brushed on afterwards. A print begins with blocks that can transfer an image to paper, while the specific finish of one impression may involve additional choices. [1].
This method helps explain what the eye sees. Black is the structure of the picture. It forms the river, much of the shore and the divisions inside the buildings. Coloured areas appear in small, strong patches over or beside that structure. Some edges have the firmness associated with printing; other areas, especially the gold, feel textured and variable. The result is not a coloured drawing reproduced mechanically. It is a designed sequence of dark and bright impressions, with the surface of this sheet adding its own particular qualities.
The physical size also matters. At under 30 cm wide, this is a work a viewer can take in closely. Its little windows, boat details and flecks on the shore reward attention at a short distance. The broad division between dark water and bright sail is legible immediately, but the small marks keep the image from being exhausted in a glance. The wide format encourages a movement from the roofs on the left, around the shore and back to the sail.
Are all impressions the same?
They should not be treated as one interchangeable object. The Lenbachhaus holds a separate impression identified as the third state, inventory GMS 223. Its record mentions traces of gold left from the preceding printing. The present page reproduces GMS 224, which the museum catalogues separately and describes with gold tone applied to the sail. These records show that a shared design can survive in materially distinct impressions and states. [2]; [1].
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum lists another Golden Sail from 1903, accession 71.1943, in its Kandinsky exhibition checklist. That impression is described as a woodcut with watercolour and metallic paint additions. This is useful evidence that Kandinsky's print circulated in more than one surviving form, but its finish should not be transferred to the Lenbachhaus sheet shown here. Nor should its New York collection be given as the location of the Munich impression. [3].
An early Kandinsky image
The Golden Sail belongs to a period before Kandinsky's most familiar large abstract compositions. Its boat, figure and shore can be named; the scene is representational. Yet it is not organised like a topographical record of a particular river. The shore is compressed into patterned rooftops and coloured fragments, and the vessel's sail is large enough to dominate the scene. The picture chooses what matters to its rhythm and colour rather than giving equal descriptive weight to every object.
Lenbachhaus scholarship places Old Russian motifs, folk art and fairy-tale imagery among the important sources for Kandinsky's early work from 1901 to 1907. That context makes the stylised buildings and journey-like boat understandable as part of a wider imaginative practice. It does not identify a particular tale illustrated by this print. Without such a source, the most useful way to read the scene is to stay with what the picture offers: a boat, a shore, a golden sail and an atmosphere shaped by contrast. [4].
Kandinsky explored comparable story-like effects in other media. Couple Riding, painted in 1906–07, places its riders amid a dark, patterned landscape. The two works are distinct: one is this small 1903 print, the other an oil painting made several years later. Looking across them helps show a recurring interest in figures, travel and points of colour emerging from dark surroundings. It should not be taken as proof that either depicts the same story. [5].
Why does the early print matter?
The work is sometimes approached only as a prelude to Kandinsky's abstraction. That misses its own achievement. The sail's gold is striking because black water and shore give it a setting. The winding bank, little roofs, scattered cool colours and spare reflections produce a scene with a deliberate pace. The print shows Kandinsky thinking through how a few concentrated colours and strongly shaped areas can organise looking. Those choices are worth noticing here, whether or not one knows his later paintings.
It also reminds us that Kandinsky was not working only in oil. Printmaking gave him a way to build an image from blocks of tone and colour, and this particular impression preserves how those decisions met the paper. Its small scale makes the theatrical effect more surprising: a broad, imagined journey held within a sheet less than thirty centimetres wide.
Kandinsky artworks directory
Frequently Asked Questions
The Lenbachhaus catalogues the impression shown here as a 1903 print made from a black block and a multicolour block, with gold tone applied to the sail by stencil or block. Other impressions can have different hand-finished details. It should not be labelled an oil painting. [1].
The reproduced impression is GMS 224 at the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München, part of the Gabriele Münter Foundation gift made in 1957. [1].
It shows a boat with a golden sail beside a dark shoreline of buildings and trees. The early Kandinsky context includes folk and fairy-tale imagery, but the sources used here do not establish a specific story for this scene. [1]; [4].
Museums hold different impressions and states. The Lenbachhaus describes GMS 224 through its printing blocks and gold application; the Guggenheim describes its separate accession 71.1943 as a woodcut with watercolour and metallic paint additions. Each description belongs to its own object. [1]; [3].
Discussion
What do you notice first in The Golden Sail? Share a close observation or a question about the evidence for this work.
Comments are for comparing what we see and what the cited sources establish.
Reader Insights
How does the gold sail change the way you read the dark shore and water?
What changes when you compare this print with Kandinsky’s later Couple Riding?
Which difference between the recorded impressions would you most like to inspect in person?
Join the Conversation
Add your observation below and tell us which part of the artwork led you to it.
References
- Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München, Das Goldene Segel, GMS 224, object record and CC0 image statement. View source.
- Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München, Das goldene Segel (Dritter Zustand), GMS 223, separate state for comparison. View source.
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Vasily Kandinsky: Around the Circle press kit, checklist for its separate impression 71.1943. View source.
- Lenbachhaus, Group Dynamics: The Blue Rider catalogue, scholarship on Kandinsky's early motifs. View source.
- Lenbachhaus, Reitendes Paar, comparison object. View source.
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