August Macke’s Frühlingslandschaft in Tegernsee (Spring Landscape in Tegernsee), painted in 1910, turns a Bavarian spring scene into a buoyant structure of trees, rooftops and distant mountains. Dense green foliage occupies the centre of the composition, broken by flashes of white walls and red roofs, while cool blue slopes rise softly across the background. Rather than describing every element with equal precision, Macke allows broad strokes and simplified forms to establish the landscape’s rhythm: vertical trunks interrupt the horizontal spread of the settlement, and buildings appear between leaves like bright fragments in a mosaic.

The painting belongs to a decisive period in Macke’s development, when he was moving beyond naturalistic landscape painting towards the heightened colour and formal clarity associated with early German Expressionism. He would become a leading member of the circle around Der Blaue Reiter, founded in Munich the following year. Its artists pursued new relationships between colour, perception and emotion, loosening art from the obligation to reproduce appearances faithfully. At Tegernsee, in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps, Macke found a landscape well suited to that experiment: recognisable houses, trees and mountains could be reorganised into a luminous decorative whole.

A closer look

The foreground is built from overlapping greens rather than a single continuous mass. Darker passages beneath the trees give the foliage weight, while yellow-green highlights suggest fresh leaves catching strong daylight. Around the edges of the crowns, the brushwork becomes softer and less defined, so individual forms seem to merge into the surrounding air. This alternation between compact colour and loosened contours prevents the abundant greenery from becoming static.

Below the trees, the houses introduce a firmer geometry. White façades and warm red roofs emerge through narrow openings in the vegetation, their angular shapes contrasting with the rounded, irregular growth above them. A dark grey roof at the lower left anchors the brighter colours, while smaller red rooftops towards the right provide sharp accents amid the green. These buildings do more than identify a settled landscape: their repeated planes create a visual beat that carries the eye laterally across the painting.

Depth is created largely through colour and degree of definition. The foreground is warm, vivid and texturally active; farther back, the mountain range recedes into restrained blues and darker muted tones. Soft blue brushstrokes in the sky continue this cooling movement into the distance. Tiny gaps between the trees offer brief glimpses of the land beyond, making the foreground feel layered rather than merely screen-like. Shadows remain comparatively light, preserving the clear, expansive atmosphere of a spring day.

Context and significance

Frühlingslandschaft in Tegernsee was made during the fertile years immediately before the First World War, when artists across Germany were challenging academic naturalism and testing more subjective ways of constructing an image. Macke’s response was notably sensuous and ordered. Even when his palette is intense, colour does not dissolve the scene; instead, it clarifies relationships between forms and gives ordinary surroundings a new visual coherence.

That balance distinguishes this landscape. It remains legible as a particular place of wooded slopes, clustered houses and Alpine distance, yet its appeal lies equally in the autonomy of its colours and shapes. The mountains are both terrain and blue bands; the roofs are both architecture and rhythmic red marks. Macke’s Tegernsee landscape thus stands at a compelling threshold, where observed nature becomes modern pictorial design without losing its atmosphere of lived experience.

Choosing the right size and finish

Artwork can feel intimate at smaller sizes and dramatically more architectural at larger ones. Use the room preview, model image and size guide to see how the proportions and scale will work in your space.

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The model in the listing images is holding the 16x16in (40x40cm) version of this art print.

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Selected artworks can be produced at statement sizes up to 3 metres (10ft). Custom sizing and specialist framing are also available. If the exact option you need is not listed, contact our workshop.

This artwork is also available as a float framed canvas, sometimes known as a shadow gap framed canvas or canvas floater. The work is printed on artist's cotton canvas and then stretched over a handmade box frame. We then "float" the canvas inside a wooden frame, which is available in a range of colours (black, dark brown, oak, antique gold and white). This is a wonderful way to present an art print without glazing in front. See some examples of float framed canvas art and explore the differences between my different finishes.