About this work
Painted at the dog's own level, Schlick is almost running off the canvas — the animal's excitement palpable, the composition entirely focused on movement and energy.
Executed in oils on cardboard on wood in the style of the Post-Impressionists, the work has a swift, sketch-like quality, its strong, fast brushstrokes conveying action and speed. The palette is warm and naturalistic — ochres, tawny browns, and earthy greens — held together by the urgency of the mark-making rather than any formal arrangement. There is no posed stillness here, no attempt to fix the animal in place; instead, the eye is pulled forward with the dog, into the leap itself.
In 1907, Marc travelled to Paris to study paintings in the city's museums and galleries, where he was greatly influenced by the work of Vincent van Gogh after seeing an exhibition of his work — and *Jumping Dog Schlick*, painted the following year, is his direct response to that encounter.
It stands alongside *Woman in the Wind by the Sea* (1907) as one of the clearest early examples of how Post-Impressionist influence shaped Marc's developing vision.
The work, measuring 54.5 × 67.5 cm, is held in the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich — the same institution that would later become home to the defining works of Der Blaue Reiter. In December of 1908, the very year he painted this work, Marc wrote to publisher Reinhard Piper of his desire to "intensify my feeling for the organic rhythm of all things" — a statement *Jumping Dog Schlick* already enacts. It is a hinge point: naturalistic in subject, Post-Impressionist in handling, but already pushing toward the animal empathy that would define everything that followed.
This is a painting for rooms that can hold a little wildness — a study, a hallway, a living space that doesn't take itself too seriously. Marc spent many hours studying animal movement and behaviour , and that deep attentiveness comes through even in a work this loose and kinetic. It rewards the viewer who pauses: the longer you look, the more the brushwork resolves into genuine tenderness. For a dog owner, an animal lover, or simply someone drawn to work with genuine joy in it, *Jumping Dog Schlick* is hard to walk past.
