Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)

Kandinsky traveled extensively throughout Europe in 1903-1908. These sojourns from Munich allowed the artist to exhibit his works in different venues and view first-hand the various artistic developments of the time. In 1907, Kandinsky and his companion Gabriele Münter rented rooms in a small house at 4, petite rue des Binelles near the park of St. Cloud in Sèvres, a town outside of Paris. During his year stay there he exhibited at the Salon d'Automne and the Indépendants in Paris. He had the opportunity to see a special Gauguin exhibition at the Salon d'Automne of 1906 as well as group exhibitions of works by Fauve painters such as Henri Matisse, Robert Delaunay, André Derain, and Maurice de Vlaminck.

In the summer and autumn of 1906, Kandinsky executed small landscape studies of the park at St. Cloud. The present painting shows the artist applying broad bands of color with a palette knife but it is less naturalistic than his earlier works and his use of color has become brighter and more dramatic. The St. Cloud landscapes demonstrates that "a distinct progress in the direction of the pictorial form has been made" (W. Grohmann, Kandinsky Life and Work, New York, 1958, p. 48).