Franz Marc's "Yellow Cow" Analysis

by sprache0chica (student)

Franz Marc’s “Yellow Cow”: A Short Analysis

Franz Marc was an Expressionist painter. He was born in Munich in 1880 and unfortunately died at the young age of 36 in 1916 at Verdun, after volunteering to join the army in the First World War. As well as ‘Yellow Cow’ some of his other most renowned paintings include ‘The Red Horses’, ‘Blue Horse 1’, ‘Fighting Forms’ and ‘Fate of the Animals’. Marc’s father was a philosophical landscapist and his mother was from a strict Protestant family, so it was no surprise when young Franz soon decided that his life goal was to become a priest. However this path was not to last long and, after a voluntary year in the army, Marc finally resolved to turn to art.

In 1900 Marc began to study drawing with Gabriel Hackl and painting with Wilhelm von Diez at the Munich Academy. His artistic development was sadly accompanied by multiple unhappy love affairs, a failed marriage and a very turbulent emotional life. In 1907 he was heavily influenced by the works of Vincent Van Gogh, which was surprising as Van Gogh was not well known during his lifetime or for a while after his death. Both Marc and Van Gogh found great meanings in insignificant things. This, in turn, led to Marc’s career in symbolism.

From 1907 onwards, Marc started to use animals as subjects for his artwork. He believed that animals are more pure and spiritual than humans and he could convey his own spirituality and emotions through them. By 1911 Marc had developed a symbolism for his use of colour. He saw yellow as a gentle, cheerful and sensual colour which symbolises femininity, blue as a spiritual and intellectual colour which symbolises masculinity, and red was Marc’s idea of resentment and violence. Most of Marc’s artwork is characterised by bright primary colours.

Mark Rosenthal, an art historian, points out in his book Franz Marc, ...

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Mark Rosenthal, an art historian, points out in his book Franz Marc, that ‘Yellow Cow’ was painted along with the emotional peace that Marc found when he married his second wife, Maria Franck, in England in the summer of 1911. Rosenthal believes that Maria could have been Marc’s inspiration for the painting. Rosenthal goes on to link the cow’s freedom and movement to Kandinsky’s idea of “inner necessity”, and he suggests that the cow is somehow stimulated by its physical and natural circumstances to act and feel in a way that is completely free and innate. In the painting, the cow leaps and bounds in its field, oblivious to anything else, it’s free will intact. The continuation of the yellow colour of the cow to the right of the head and to the white below the udder shows the unity between the cow and nature as they blend into each other. This supports Franz Marc’s own idea that animals are pure and at one with nature.

We see a simplistic use of primary colours in the painting; however the shapes of the different aspects within the painting are arranged in a chaotic, disorganised way which could portray the excitement and mixed emotions that Marc must have been feeling at the beginning of his new wedlock. There is a shroud of darkness set behind the cow which shows how any anxieties or fears, which he may have held before the marriage, have been overcome by his consuming love for Maria Franck.

The reds around the cow seem to represent the raw passion that Marc felt for his new wife. This sweeping of red could also be interpreted as the emotional journey Marc made before his marriage, as he used red as the colour of anger, frustration and desire, all of which are feelings typical to newborn love. Extending into the tumultuous background are the soft whites and yellows of the cow and, for me, this means that Franck had a growing and abounding influence on Marc's life. I think that the painting could be a reflection of Marc's state of mind and the red and blue background represents his thoughts, doubts, hopes and emotions. The extension of the yellow shows how Mary Franck occupied the whole of Marc’s thoughts, which is generally acknowledged as a classic characterization of love.

It would appear to me that the blue mountains depicted in the background of ‘Yellow Cow’ represent Marc, his masculinity and all of his spiritual aspirations, yet the bright yellow cow in the foreground is a likely depiction of Maria Franck. In essence, the painting has become a wedding picture for Franz Marc and Maria Franck, as they are brought together in unison in the same painting. Yet, in my mind, this extraordinary painting is not simply a portrayal of a marriage, but a representation of the inner imaginings and thought processes of Marc which, at this stage in his life, are centred on his true love. The dawn painted as the skyline perfectly completes the image as it symbolises the new start that Marc felt he had, in a new marriage, and with a new love interest.