Count Harry Kessler's Family on Horseback
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Several riders on chestnut and red-brown horses move through a wooded setting with broad trees with green and blue-lavender foliage filling the upper half of the composition. The figures are painted in quick, transparent washes of orange, red, pink, lavender, and blue, with loose brown ink lines indicating the horses' legs and riders' postures. One rider at center wears a pink or lavender outfit. The whole surface is wet and layered — colors bleeding into each other, the trees dissolving into the figures and the ground. Count Harry Kessler was a German diplomat, art collector, publisher, and patron of the arts — one of the most culturally connected figures in early twentieth-century Europe. He commissioned work from Maillol, Bonnard, and Denis, founded the Cranach Press, and kept a diary that is now considered one of the most important documents of the era.