About this work
Elisabeth stands as a half-length figure, her quiet face turned toward the artist, eyes cast slightly downward toward an imaginary point outside the frame.
In her hands she holds a bowl with three apples in yellow, red, and green.
The figure is not centred on the canvas — a yellowish curtain gathered by a cord on the right edge shifts her subtly to the left , lending the composition an unforced, domestic asymmetry. Blues and greens dominate the background, contrasting harmoniously with the reds and yellows of the apples and clothing.
Formally, the painting is strongly reminiscent of the late work of Paul Cézanne — while the bowl of apples seems to consist only of "colour substance," the portrait itself reads almost like a still life. The result is an image poised between tenderness and formal rigour, intimate and studied at once.
*Portrait with Apples* is an oil-on-canvas work executed in 1909, depicting his wife Elisabeth Gerhardt, and was created shortly after their wedding.
At the end of October 1909, the couple settled in Tegernsee, where this painting was made.
Macke had studied the painting of the Fauves in Paris during their honeymoon and become influenced by their style — and this portrait marks the completion of his early artistic phase.
The plate of apples is a direct Cézannian echo — a still life motif nestled within a portrait — as Macke was developing his own vision in which colour, form, figure, and environment must fuse into a harmonious whole.
Both artist and wife loved the painting so much that it was never meant to be sold — it was purchased only when a collector, given free choice at the 1912 Sonderbund exhibition, did not realise it was off the market. It now belongs to the permanent collection of the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich.
Many of the quiet paintings from the Tegernsee period show Elisabeth in numerous poses — reading, sewing, holding the child — always with lowered eyes, giving the motif a secluded, concentrated atmosphere. This one carries that same quality: it suits a room that rewards stillness — a study, a bedroom, a sitting room with natural light. The warm ochre curtain and the cool background pull in opposite directions just enough to hold the eye without demanding anything of the viewer. It speaks to those drawn to intimacy over spectacle: a painting that feels less like a statement hung on a wall and more like something overheard.
