Animals and birds of all kinds became subjects for Klee's pictures from the earliest period. Richard Verdi writes, "As creatures whose form and behaviour invite a more universal treatment, birds were to become (along with fishes) Klee's preferred aminals - truly cosmic creatures whose bird's-eye view of the world perfectly accorded with the artist's own. But, in addition to this, Klee's involvement with the realm of the birds may be explained in much simpler terms. The artist's son, Felix, has admitted that his father was bewitched by birds and flowers - two themes which inspired some of his greatest paintings. Nor may Felix's pairing of these two facets of creation be purely fortuitous; for Klee's art often suggests to us that he regarded birds as the flowers of the animal kingdom - as bright, beautiful, elusive, and invariably good.

"Perhaps Klee's most characteristic treatment of birds is as the garrulous and gregarious inhabitants of an enchanted sea- or landscape, where they serve as bright, scattered accents against the duller tones and repeated rhythms of their surroundings. Among such works are Water Birds of 1919 [the present work], Exotic River Landscape of 1922 and Bird Garden of 1924 (op. cit., pp. 49, 56). Klee executed another watercolour of the same title in 1939 where the depiction is more literal than in the present work.

This work is recorded in the Artist's own oeuvre catalogue as follows: 1919, 195
Wasservögel (E. nten)
Aquarell und schwarze Ölfarbenzeichng
Van Gelder

Sold with a photo-certificate from Josef Helfenstein and Stefan Frey of the Paul Klee Stiftung, Berne, dated Berne, 15 October 1993.