Paul Klee

Nine out of 10 sketch books that Paul Klee used in the 1890s survive, as well as some single drafts. There are also some schoolbooks with humorous sketches in the margins, but Klee accords them no artistic value. The drawings mostly depict landscapes or cityscapes from Klee's immediate surroundings. He also documents trips to see his aunts in the mountains outside Bern, to Beatenberg and trips he took with his father into the canton of Ticino. He rarely draws figures, and portraits even less. The sketches are generally done in front of the subject, " according to nature ", as Klee notes. Sometimes he completes some of the more detailed elements back at home in his room. Looking back in 1919 at the work he did in his youth, Klee comments:

"The cityscape of Bern, and even more that of Fribourg, near which I spent many summer holidays with my parents, were more the substantial impressions, then Lake Thun and the Alps, St. Beatenberg and the Hohengrat. Later also the close environs of Bern, and the blithe, untrammelled course of the Aare. I began to regularly draw this landscape, without thinking of injecting any hint of a deeper sense into it. A certain talent in the wielding of sharp pencils and pens, and a certain sense of taste in the choice of motifs brought me appreciation in my immediate circle."

In this watercolour and pencil, Klee captures the view of the Schadau landscape near Thun. An earlier drawing in one of his sketchbooks served as a draft for this work. The drawings that Klee did at this time were detailed representations of what he saw before him, without characterisation, simplification or abstraction. He mentions these sketches only in passing in his diary and does not include them in his hand-written catalogue of work of 1911 at all, showing quite clearly just how little he valued them.