August Macke’s Mädchen mit blauen Vögeln (Girl with Blue Birds), painted in 1914, brings a young girl and two vividly coloured birds into an unusually intimate woodland scene. The girl appears in profile towards the left, her long brown hair and pale dress set against dense greens and a substantial violet-purple tree trunk. Across from her, the paired blue birds form a bright, animated counterweight. Rather than describing the setting naturalistically, Macke builds it from saturated passages of green, blue, yellow, orange and purple, making colour itself the principal source of structure and vitality.

Macke was a leading figure in German Expressionism and a member of Der Blaue Reiter, the loose association of artists formed in Munich around Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. Although its members differed markedly in style, they shared an interest in liberating colour and form from straightforward imitation. Macke’s own paintings are often distinguished by their clarity, warmth and decorative rhythm: modern figures, gardens and public spaces become arrangements of simplified shapes and luminous colour. Created in the final year of his brief career—Macke was killed in 1914 during the opening months of the First World War—this painting belongs to the remarkably concentrated period in which he developed his most recognisable visual language.

A closer look

The horizontal composition is carefully unbalanced. The girl occupies the central-left area, while the birds stand close together on the right, encouraging the eye to travel between human figure and animal forms. Her head is slightly lowered and her darkly marked eye gives the profile a quiet, inward character. Soft strokes across the light dress create a gentle glow around her figure, contrasting with the darker hair and the stronger colours of the surrounding vegetation.

The birds are among the painting’s most striking inventions. Their intense blues range through subtly varied tones rather than forming a single flat block, while their elongated beaks and simplified silhouettes give them an alert, almost theatrical presence. Macke does not isolate them against an empty ground: their bodies overlap the greens of the setting, so that blue plumage, foliage and shadow become part of the same interlocking colour pattern. Their closeness also creates a compact visual group that balances the larger but more subdued figure of the girl.

Behind the figures, layered green forms suggest trees and foliage without becoming botanically specific. Dark trunks rise through the scene, with the purple trunk at the left acting almost like a vertical frame. Towards the upper centre, lighter yellow-green passages appear to break through the canopy, opening the composition and giving the background a warmer glow. Lower down, touches of orange and purple interrupt the grass and undergrowth. Visible brushwork keeps these zones in motion: light and shade are conveyed less through smooth modelling than through adjacent strokes and shifts of hue.

Context and significance

Mädchen mit blauen Vögeln reflects a central modernist concern of the years before the First World War: how painting might communicate perception and mood without depending upon conventional realism. Macke’s answer was neither severe abstraction nor dramatic distortion. Here, recognisable figures remain at the centre of the composition, yet their world is transformed into a patchwork of colour whose relationships matter as much as the subject itself. The pale dress against dark hair, blue birds against green foliage, and warm glimmers among cooler shadows give the scene its emotional immediacy.

What makes the painting especially compelling is this balance between stillness and chromatic energy. The girl’s reserved profile suggests a suspended moment, while the birds, bright foliage and active brushwork keep the surrounding scene alive. It is a characteristic example of Macke’s ability to make colour feel both decorative and deeply present: a woodland encounter simplified into an eloquent exchange of gaze, shape and hue.

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.

If you need an exact size, specialist framing or help planning a larger display, ask our workshop for advice.

The model in the listing images is holding the 18x24in (45x60cm) 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.