Estate of the artist
Dalzell Hatfield Galleries, Los Angeles (acquired from the above)
Acquired from the above in 1963

Milwaukee Art Museum; Columbus Museum of Art; Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Art; San Antonio, Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, Gabriele Münter, The Years of Expressionism, 1903-1920, 1997-2001, no. 57, illustrated in the catalogue
Cambridge, Busch-Reisinger Museum, Franz Marc: Horses, 2000-01

The work is in excellent condition. Board is stable and visible at some areas at the surface of the composition; this is inherent to the work. Under UV light: no signs of inpainting are apparent.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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Landscapes inhabit a place of unparalleled importance in Münter's oeuvre; they were her favorite subjects to paint, and the nuanced changes in light and weather provided ever-varying material for her explorations of color modulation. The vast majority of her finest landscapes—the present lot included—were painted en plain air in the town of Murnau, the Bavarian alpine village where she stayed with Wassily Kandinsky from 1908 until 1914. The two were fascinated by the local tradition of Hinterglasmalerei (glass painting) which they discovered there and with which they experimented extensively. Münter's response to the jewel-like luminosity, simplified forms and fresh naiveté of this folk-art is particularly evident in her 🎐resulting paintings of the following years.

An alternate version of the present work now hangs in the collection of the University of Iowa Museum of Art, and both paintings feature anonymous and shadowy figures at center left; such lonely characters were common in Münter's landscapes from this period and have since been linked to the anxious and haunting figures in the art of Edvard Munch. As Reinhold Heller discussed in his description of these works, "The single, dark form of a woman appears in the snow outdoors, her face featureless, her figure amorphous, a somber shape of blackness quarantined in the gold of reflected sunshine... Her place, it might be argued, is not here amid blue shadows and yellow brightness, but within the houses behind her from which she has emerged" (Reinhold Heller, Gabriele Münter, The Years of Expressionism, 1903-1920 (exhibition catalogue), New York, 1997, p. 147).

Hof im Schnee I (Farmyard in Snow I) was executed in 1911, the very year Münter collaborated with Kandinsky and other artists including Alexej von Jawlensky, Franz Marc and August Macke to found the vanguard movement Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) in Munich. As is palpably communica🐷ted in the present lot, the group sought to liberate painting from a literal, figurative understanding of the world, reaching instead for a symbolic and spiritual dimension in their art.

Fig. 1 Edvard Munch, Såmannen (The Sower), oil 🅠on canvas, 1913, offered in Sotheby's May 2, 2012, Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale🦂