Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand

Catalogue identity

The work is catalogued as a landscape painting by Wassily Kandinsky, titled Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, and dated 1902. The title identifies the subject directly: the Kochel lake in the Bavarian Alps and the Herzogstand, the mountain mass that rises above its far shore. The record presents the attribution and the 1902 date as catalogue fields, so the object date belongs to the painting itself, while the cataloguing activity that fixes title, attribution and alternate names is a later documentary layer. The same record registers the work under two alternate language titles, Kochel, See mit Herzogstand in German and Kochel, lac et Herzogstand in French, which show the title circulating in more than one linguistic context rather than a single fixed form.(Wikimedia Commons: Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, n.d., Title, artist, date fields; Title field alternative language labels)

The recorded dimensions are approximately 23 cm in height and 32 cm in width, a small format close to the size of a sheet of paper. Such a scale places the painting in the category of a small panel rather than a display-scale landscape, and the size is consistent with a study made close at hand. These measurements are catalogue values, given as approximate, and they describe the support as recorded rather than any framing or later mounting.(Wikimedia Commons: Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, n.d., Dimensions field)

The Wikimedia Commons record from which these facts derive references a Centre Pompidou object page and a Google Arts & Culture asset, but the texts of those pages are not supplied here. The identification of the painting, its attribution, date, dimensions and alternate titles therefore rests on the Commons record as the available evidence, while the museum's own catalogue description, and any account it gives of the painting's handling or history, remain to be checked against the institutional record. This qualification matters for how the object is described: the subject and attribution are documented in the supplied material, but the fuller institutional account is referenced rather than read.(Wikimedia Commons: Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, n.d., References field)

The work is a landscape painting titled Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, painted by Wassily Kandinsky in 1902.(Wikimedia Commons: Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, n.d.)

The painting measures approximately 23 cm in height and 32 cm in width.(Wikimedia Commons: Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, n.d.)

The work is recorded under the alternate titles Kochel, See mit Herzogstand (German) and Kochel, lac et Herzogstand (French).(Wikimedia Commons: Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, n.d.)

The Wikimedia Commons record references a Centre Pompidou object page and a Google Arts & Culture asset, but the page texts themselves are not supplied here.(Wikimedia Commons: Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, n.d.)

The Subject and the Limits of the Record

Visual observation

The supplied record identifies the subject of this small landscape as the Kochel lake, with the Herzogstand mountain mass rising above its far shore. That is the whole of the described view: the record specifies a lake, a distant shoreline and a mountain above the water, and it states explicitly that it does not describe figures, actions or any narrative content. The account of what can be seen therefore rests on a subject identification carried by the title and the source's description rather than on a detailed visual inventory. Nothing in the evidence describes colour, brushwork, light, weather, foreground incident, buildings other than the mountain and lake, or the handling of the water surface, so the picture's internal composition can only be characterised at the level of the named elements and their spatial relation: water below, far shore, and the Herzogstand above it.(Wikimedia Commons: Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, n.d., Title description)

The landscape depicts the Kochel lake with the Herzogstand mountain mass rising above its far shore; the record does not describe figures, actions or narrative.(Wikimedia Commons: Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, n.d.)

Documented support and medium

The documented material facts for Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand are few and precise. The work is a painting in oil on canvas board, recorded under that medium designation in the Wikimedia Commons discovery record for the file. The same record gives its measurements as approximately 23 cm in height and 32 cm in width, and identifies it as a landscape by Wassily Kandinsky dated 1902, held in the collection of the Musée National d'Art Moderne at the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou in Paris under accession number AM 81-65-13, with German and French alternate titles. These are catalog-level facts about support and format. They establish what the object is made of in the most general terms, and they establish its physical scale, but they do not describe how the paint was applied, what pigments were used, or how the board was prepared.(Wikimedia Commons: Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, n.d., Medium field)

Interpretation

The medium statement matters because canvas board is a composite support rather than a simple one: a fabric facing mounted on a rigid backing, thinner and more rigid than stretched canvas. The record itself supplies only the term, not a description of the board's construction, its manufacturer, its priming, or its condition. Any account of why a painter might choose such a support, for example its portability for work away from the studio, is a general inference about the material class rather than a documented fact about this panel. The evidence supports the identification of oil on canvas board and nothing further about the layers, ground or paint film.(Wikimedia Commons: Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, n.d., Medium field)

The dimensions place the painting at a modest scale, close to that of a sheet of paper in its longer dimension. Combined with the rigid board support, the recorded height and width describe a small panel rather than a large display canvas. This is a material and format observation drawn from the catalog measurements, and it bears on how the landscape is composed: the lake and mountain are compressed into a format of roughly 23 by 32 centimetres. The record does not state whether the board was used outdoors or in the studio, so the small scale should not by itself be treated as proof of plein-air practice for this particular work.(Wikimedia Commons: Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, n.d., Medium field)

Interpretation

What the painting depicts and what it is made of belong to different kinds of evidence and should be kept distinct. The record describes the landscape as the Kochel lake with the Herzogstand mountain mass rising above its far shore, and notes that it describes no figures, actions or narrative. That is a description of subject matter, not an account of technique. The materials evidence establishes oil paint on a canvas board support of a given size; it does not establish the colors, brushwork, finish or layering visible in the image, and the supplied record does not report a technical examination of the paint surface. The two strands, subject and medium, are documented at catalog level, while questions of handling and pigment remain outside the evidence provided here.(Wikimedia Commons: Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, n.d., Medium field; Title description)

The materials record also carries a qualification about its own sources. The Wikimedia Commons entry references a Centre Pompidou object page and a Google Arts & Culture asset but does not supply the text of either, and the image is credited to Google Art & Culture and marked public domain in the supplied record. The medium, dimensions and collection data therefore rest on the Commons record as an intermediary. The museum's own account of the painting, which might document preparation, pigments or treatment, has not been consulted in the evidence assembled here. Claims about technique beyond oil on canvas board should be attributed to whatever technical source eventually supplies them, not inferred from the present record.(Wikimedia Commons: Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, n.d., Medium field)

The painting's medium is oil on canvas board.(Wikimedia Commons: Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, n.d.)

The Evidence Available for Reception

Reception evidence for this painting is unusually thin in the supplied record, and the account has to begin with that limit. The Wikimedia Commons file record identifies the work as Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand by Wassily Kandinsky, dated 1902, oil on canvas board, approximately 23 by 32 cm, in the collection of the Musée National d'Art Moderne at the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou, Paris, accession number AM 81-65-13, with alternate titles Kochel, See mit Herzogstand and Kochel, lac et Herzogstand. None of the units supplied here documents a critical review, an exhibition history, a sale, a catalogue entry or a statement of the artist's intention. The reception that can be written from this evidence is therefore the reception embodied in the record itself: how the object has been catalogued, titled, attributed, licensed and circulated as a reference image. That is a real and consequential stage of modern reception, but it is not the same as a history of how viewers and critics responded to the painting, and the two should not be conflated.(Wikimedia Commons: Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, n.d., Source/Photographer and license fields)

The one reception event the supplied units actually establish is reproduction and licensing. The image is credited to Google Art & Culture and marked public domain in the supplied record. This tells us that the painting has been photographed or digitised and distributed through a major cultural platform, and that the Commons record treats the resulting image as free of copyright restrictions. It does not tell us when the photograph was made, who made it, whether it was made for the museum or for the platform, or how the museum itself describes the work. The credit and licence fields document a channel of circulation, not a judgment about the picture, and the record's own reference to a Centre Pompidou object page and a Google Arts & Culture asset is noted without the text of either being supplied. Any claim about how the museum presents or interprets the painting therefore remains unverified here.(Wikimedia Commons: Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, n.d., Source/Photographer and license fields)

Subject and the Circulating Image

Interpretation

Read together, these units support a modest but useful synthesis about how this object accrues meaning. The painting's documented identity rests on a chain of institutional and platform records: a museum collection and accession number, alternate titles in German and French, a Commons file, and a Google Arts & Culture image declared public domain. Each link fixes something, the title, the attribution, the medium, the dimensions, the collection, the rights status, and each link also narrows what the record says, since none of the supplied units reports the museum's own account of the painting or any interpretation of how Kandinsky handled this scene. The honest conclusion is that this small Alpine view is well documented as an object and barely documented as a received work. Its place in a larger history of art would have to be argued from that documented identity and from direct study of the painting, not from a reception history the evidence does not contain.(Wikimedia Commons: Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, n.d., Source/Photographer and license fields; Title description)

The image is credited to Google Art & Culture and marked public domain in the supplied record.(Wikimedia Commons: Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, n.d.)

Institutional holding

The painting is documented as part of the collection of the Musée National d'Art Moderne at the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou in Paris, where it carries the accession number AM 81-65-13. That single documented unit of collection data establishes the institutional home of the work and supplies a stable identifier connecting the object to a specific holding. It also defines a division of evidence that governs any account of the picture: the collection and accession facts are documented, while other descriptions of the work derive from a discovery and identification record whose underlying museum and image-source texts are not themselves supplied. The Centre Pompidou object page is referenced by that record but its text is not included, so the museum's own catalogue entry, its account of the painting's history within the collection, and any treatment or display information remain outside the supplied evidence and must be checked against the institutional record rather than assumed.(Wikimedia Commons: Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, n.d., Collection and accession number fields)

The painting belongs to the collection of the Musée National d'Art Moderne at the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou in Paris, with accession number AM 81-65-13.(Wikimedia Commons: Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, n.d.)

Documented particulars

Interpretation

The identification record for this painting establishes its core particulars: it is a landscape titled Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, painted by Wassily Kandinsky in 1902 in oil on canvas board, measuring approximately 23 cm in height and 32 cm in width. The work is recorded as belonging to the collection of the Musée National d'Art Moderne at the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou in Paris under accession number AM 81-65-13, and it also carries the alternate titles Kochel, See mit Herzogstand in German and Kochel, lac et Herzogstand in French. The subject is the Kochel lake with the Herzogstand mountain mass rising above its far shore; the record describes no figures, actions or narrative. The same record references a Centre Pompidou object page and a Google Arts & Culture asset, but the texts of those pages are not supplied, so the museum's own account of the painting remains to be checked directly. The image is credited to Google Art & Culture and marked public domain in the supplied record. These facts about artist, date, medium, dimensions and holding are the anchors on which any valuation or interpretation of the object must rest.(Wikimedia Commons: Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, n.d.)

Recorded value estimate

A working insurance estimate has been generated for the painting: a range of US$2M to US$8M, recorded as a working calculation dated 2026-10-30. Its stated methodology is a model-generated range that conservatively anchors on the confirmed context: a 1902 early landscape in oil on canvas board by Kandinsky, small in scale at about 23 x 32 cm, held in the permanent collection of the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, under accession AM 81-65-13. The calculation deliberately relies on the confirmed artist, period, medium, documented museum provenance and modest size; no public auction or insurance comparables were supplied or used, and the range is intentionally wide in order to support manual review. It is qualified as a working estimate only, not an official insurance value, appraisal, auction result or sale price, and as not reflecting verified market data, private insurance schedules or confirmed comparable sales. The museum's own record was referenced but not supplied, so confidence in the identification remains medium pending direct institutional verification, and the estimate is to be refined using institutional collection records and professional appraisal input, with a qualified fine-art appraiser and the owning institution consulted for any formal insurance valuation.(Wikimedia Commons: Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, n.d.)

The value range and the identification share the same evidential base, and the relationship between them is worth stating plainly. Because the two-million-to-eight-million figure is explicitly derived from the confirmed artist, date, medium, size and museum provenance, it is a valuation of the object as currently identified, not an independent confirmation of that identification. The record itself keeps confidence in the identification at medium strength pending direct institutional verification and notes that the museum's own record was referenced but not supplied. In practical terms, the number documents a provisional working method and its stated inputs rather than a settled market or insurance position, and it should be read as a prompt for manual review and professional appraisal rather than as evidence about the painting's market standing.(Wikimedia Commons: Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, n.d.)

Working estimate

Calculated working insurance estimate, not a sale price: Estimated value: US$2M to US$8M Recorded date: Working calculation, generated 2026-10-30. Methodology: This broad working range is a model-generated estimate based on the confirmed context: a 1902 early landscape oil on canvas board by Wassily Kandinsky, small scale (about 23 x 32 cm), held in the permanent collection of the Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou (accession AM 81-65-13). The calculation conservatively anchors on the confirmed artist, period, medium, documented museum provenance, and the work's modest size. No public auction or insurance comparables were supplied or used. The range is intentionally wide to support manual review and should be refined using institutional collection records and professional appraisal input. Qualification: This is a model-generated working range for manual review only. It is not an official insurance value, appraisal, auction result, or sale price. It does not reflect verified market data, private insurance schedules, or confirmed comparable sales. The museum's own record was referenced but not supplied; confidence in the identification remains medium pending direct institutional verification. Consult a qualified fine-art appraiser and the owning institution for formal insurance valuation.(Wikimedia Commons: Kochel, Lake and Herzogstand, n.d.)