Due to poor health Kirchner moved to Davos in Switzerland in the beginning of 1917. He had recovered sufficiently by the end of this year that he started painting again. His new surroundings gave him a fund of challenging pictorial material. He started to depict the villages in the mountains, the farmers doing their work, the local flora and fauna and, above all, the magnificent landscape with its dramatic mountains, peaceful pastures and thick woods.

Having moved to a farmhouse called Larchen in 1918, Kirchner's late expressionist style was named after this location. The Larchen style continued during the years 1921-1923 and is characterised by an increased sense of decorative order. "The late development and final resolution of Kirchner's last expressionist style occurred between 1921 and 1923. ... While still compatible with inwardness and subjectivity the paintings are ... more simply monumental than those of the immediately preceding years." (Gordon, op. cit., p. 119.)

During this period Kirchner painted a series of small studies of the woods highlighting the pines or larch trees which, with their sharp and elongated shapes, brought echoes of his earlier expressionistic forms.