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Provenance: Dr. Joseph Haubrich, Cologne (by 1947)
Private Collection, Germany (acquired from the above)
Wolfgang Werner, Bremen (acquired from the above in 1983)
Diethelm Hoener, Germany (acquired from the above and sold: Phillips, de Pury & Luxembourg, New York, The Hoener Collection, November 5, 2001, lot 24)
Acquired at the above sale
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Exhibited: Berlin, Erste Ausstellung der freien Sezession, 1914, no. 145
Berlin, Galerie Ferdinand Moeller, Neuere deutsche Kunst aus Berliner Privatbesitz, 1928, no. 15
Cologne, Museen der Stadt Köln in der Alten Universität, August Macke, Gedächtnisausstellung, 1947, no. 48
Braunschweig, Kunstverein, August Macke, 1954, no. 63
Münster, Westfälischer Kunstverein, August Macke, Gedenkausstellung zum 70. Geburtstag, 1957, no. 78
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, Expressionisme van Gogh tot Picasso, 1964, no. 81
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Literature: Walter Cohen, "August Macke", Jahrbuch der jungen Kunst, vol. 3, Leipzig, 1922, illustrated in color opposite the title page
Walter Cohen, "August Macke", Der Cicerone, Leipzig, September 1922, illustrated in color p. 710
Gustav Vriesen, August Macke, Stuttgart, 1953, no. 436
Gustav Vriesen, August Macke, Stuttgart, 1957, no. 436, illustrated p. 332
Donald E. Gordon, Modern Art Exhibitions 1900-1916, Munich, 1974, no. 145, p. 818
Ursula Heiderich, August Macke, Gemälde, Werkverzeichnis, Ostfildern, 2008, no. 515, illustrated p. 485
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Notes: Shortly after the famous Herbstsalon had taken place in Berlin in the autumn of 1913, Macke moved with his wife Elisabeth and their two children to Hilterfingen in Switzerland, where the present work was executed. The eight months that he spent there shortly before his early death the following year were among the happiest and most productive periods of the artist's life. Badende Mädchen mirrors the world of primal innocence and freedom which he found in Hilterfingen, and this celebration the joys of outdoor life calls to mind a series of Bathers painted by Paul Cézanne. Macke was particularly fascinated by the effects of light, and the brilliant, translucent quality of color typical of his watercolors is also visible in this oil painting.
Barry Herbert wrote: 'Macke's work was a constant reaffirmation of his unaffected delight in this earthly paradise of which he found himself to be a part, and in his paintings he recorded its small, apparently insignificant, moments of pleasure with a penetrating and tender eye for the underlying currents of feeling that made them memorable... In them it is as if all worldly cares have been temporarily laid aside, self-consciousness has been forgotten, and these men and women once again experience something like their former state of innocence. Their figures are static and calm in the midst of activity as they wait, quietly observing the ebb and flow of life around them – and it was no mere artistic affectation that made Macke show his characters either sunk deep in thought or in the act of silently watching. The passing moment becomes fixed in time' (B. Herbert, German Expressionism, Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter, London, 1983, pp. 148 & 149).
