About this work
*Market in Tunis* captures the bustling atmosphere of a North African market in the city of Tunis.
The painting features a multitude of market stalls filled with colourful wares — fruits, vegetables, and textiles — while a diverse range of figures, both vendors and customers, are depicted in traditional Tunisian clothing, interacting, haggling, and exchanging goods.
Although the composition is structured in a traditional manner, with figures and buildings read in linear perspective, a planar architecture of coloured segments dominates and ultimately contradicts that perspectival view — pulling the scene toward something closer to pattern than reportage. Radiant yellow, bright red, and strong blue give the work an intensity and luminosity that are instantly recognisable as Macke's.
The expressive, gestural handling of paint and the strong use of colour add a sense of movement and energy to the scene, drawing the viewer into the thick of the crowd.
In April 1914, Macke undertook a decisive journey to Tunisia alongside Paul Klee and Louis René Moilliet.
The landscapes of Kairouan, Tunis, and Hammamet revealed to him the intensity of Mediterranean light and sun-drenched colours, which translated into a series of watercolours and canvases where forms are almost dissolved into colour.
The watercolour paintings he produced on this famous trip are defined by a simplification of form and a new luminosity — a marked step beyond anything he had achieved before. The Tunisia works also carried something of the Orphist influence he had absorbed from Robert Delaunay: many of his Tunisian watercolours feature early elements of Orphism, the non-objective style of cubist painting that used prismatic hues to suggest movement and harmony.
Departing from the anecdotal Orientalism of the nineteenth century, these works abstracted their motifs into ornamental shapes and crystalline structures — and they remain a highlight of early Modernism. The canvas's market scene is among the most commercially significant of this period: *Market in Tunis* (1914) sold for £2.86 million at auction in 2000.
This is a painting that rewards a room with good natural light — the kind of north-facing study or open-plan living space where afternoon sun can catch its warm ochres and dusty reds without washing them out. The Tunisian watercolours of 1914 demonstrate an exceptional command of colour and an original synthesis of Impressionism, Fauvism, Orphism, and German sensibility — meaning the work sits comfortably alongside both classical European prints and more
