Lied (Chanson)

The catalogue record

The work is a tempera painting on glazed cardboard measuring 49 by 66 centimetres. The support and modest dimensions belong to the object as catalogued and should be kept distinct from the dates attached to its documentation and display. The picture carries two inscriptions: a lower-left inscription KANDINSKY in white gouache, and a top-right inscription Kandinsky, Chanson, N° 117. The painted signature in gouache and the identifying title and number at upper right are thus part of the physical object and are recorded as such in the institutional entry.(Christian Derouet, 2007, Inscriptions)

The recorded title has a history of its own. Under the simple title Chanson and the number 2645, the small tempera was presented at the Salon des Indépendants in 1907, and it became Chant de la Volga in 1913 in the Sturm-Album, where it is reproduced at plate 30. The title used in the present catalogue, Lied (Chanson) Chant de la Volga, carries the German word Lied alongside the French Chanson and the later Chant de la Volga, preserving the successive names under which the work was shown and published rather than settling on a single one. The upper-right inscription naming Chanson and the number 117 belongs to the object's own markings and should not be conflated with the number 2645 recorded for the 1907 Salon presentation.(Christian Derouet, 2007, Inscriptions; Analysis)

Object, evidence and interpretation

Interpretation

Read together, the entries establish a distinction worth keeping in view between what the object visibly is and what the catalogue makes of it. The visible evidence is the tempera on glazed cardboard, its dimensions, its two inscriptions, the boats and dragon ships, and the walled town on the far bank. The historical and technical evidence establishes the 1907 Salon des Indépendants presentation under the title Chanson and number 2645, the 1913 retitling in the Sturm-Album, the 1981 bequest, and the catalogue's account of the Little Russian cycle, the Morris adaptation and the colour method. The catalogue's interpretive claims, including the opposition to the tsars' westernisation, the Saint Petersburg and Moscow rivalry, and the aim of provoking enchantment, are attributed to the museum rather than presented as settled fact. The object matters within a larger history of material culture because a small work on glazed cardboard can carry a programme about national originality, folk sources and modern colour at the same time as it served as an entry point for a Russian visual language in Paris.(Christian Derouet, 2007, Analysis; Acquisition; Inscriptions)

The work carries a lower-left inscription KANDINSKY in white gouache and a top-right inscription Kandinsky, Chanson, N° 117.(Christian Derouet, 2007)

The recorded scene

Visual observation

The institutional record describes the picture's subject as boatmen in legendary dragon ships, the drakkars, a scene the record draws from Russian folklore and the Volga River. That description establishes the narrative core of the image. The centre of the composition is occupied by the vessels and their crews, with the river carrying the movement of the scene. The setting is fixed by a second recorded element: a distant walled town with onion domes and white church spires rises above a wooded bank, which the record reads as placing the action within a Russian landscape. The two observations work together. The boats supply the legend, while the town and bank establish where the legend unfolds. The record's wording presents the subject as a scene drawn from folklore, which is a statement about the picture's content, not a claim that a specific written source or named legend has been identified.(Christian Derouet, 2007, Analysis)

Interpretation

Read as a composition, the account divides the image between a foreground of water and shipping and a distance of wooded slope and built forms. The town is described as walled, with onion domes and white spires catching the light above the trees. Because the record does not describe the arrangement of the boats in detail, the spatial relationship between the crews and the distant bank can be stated only in the terms the record supplies. The walled town functions within the account as the marker of place. Its domes and spires identify the landscape as Russian, allowing the Volga subject to be recognised without a caption. This is the record's interpretation of the visible elements, and it is supported by the recorded presence of those forms rather than by any independent identification of the town or church.(Christian Derouet, 2007, Analysis)

Colour as a visual technique

The record connects the unmixed colour to the pursuit of enchantment, naming Bilibin and Léon Bakst as artists who sought a comparable effect by adopting a technique in which pure colours are placed side by side without mixing, as on printed images. This is an attributed comparison. The record establishes that the technique and the enchantment aim are shared, which allows the picture to be understood as participating in a broader Russian visual idiom rather than as an isolated experiment. It does not establish that Kandinsky derived the method from either artist, and no direction of influence is recorded. The link should therefore be treated as a comparison of shared means, not as a documented line of transmission. What the comparison does establish is that the choice of flat, juxtaposed colour was understood by the catalogue author as a deliberate effect rather than a limitation of the medium.(Christian Derouet, 2007, Analysis)

From Chanson to Chant de la Volga

Visual observation

The documentary record traces a change of title. Under the simple title Chanson and the number 2645, the small tempera was presented at the Salon des Indépendants in 1907; by 1913 it had become Chant de la Volga in the Sturm-Album, where it is reproduced at page 30. The record thus establishes both a Paris exhibition appearance in 1907 and a later, differently titled publication in 1913. The inscription N° 117 on the work is recorded separately and should not be conflated with the exhibition number 2645. The shift from the neutral title Chanson to the descriptive Chant de la Volga corresponds to the Volga subject that the record identifies in the composition, but the record does not state who supplied the later title or why the change was made.(Christian Derouet, 2007, Techniques, Dimensions; Analysis)

The Russian argument in the picture

The institutional account places the work within a sustained engagement with Russian popular art. At Sèvres, Kandinsky painted and engraved essentially a cycle on Little Russian themes, which the record describes as exalting the folklore of the Russian people. The record further states that the Little Russian themes adapt William Morris's Arts and Crafts to the originality of Russian popular art, in opposition to the tsars' westernisation of the country, and that they illustrate the rivalry between Saint Petersburg and Moscow. Kandinsky is described as a Muscovite at heart. On this account the dragon ships, the walled town and the unmixed colours carry a cultural argument: folk art is treated as a source of national originality rather than as a lesser tradition. This is the catalogue author's reading, and it is attributed to that record rather than presented as the painter's own recorded statement.(Christian Derouet, 2007, Analysis)

Interpretation

The reading of the picture as a cultural argument depends on connections the record makes between subject, technique and context. The Volga boatmen and the walled town supply Russian content; the side-by-side pure colours supply a technique the record compares to printed images and to Bilibin and Bakst; the Morris adaptation supplies a frame in which Russian popular art is set against imperial westernisation and the rivalry of the two capitals. Taken together, these elements let the picture be described as a deliberate act of cultural choice made in colour as much as in subject. That formulation is an interpretive synthesis of the record's several claims. It should be held as such, since the record does not quote Kandinsky on these points and does not document a programmatic statement attached to this work.(Christian Derouet, 2007, Analysis)

Visual observation

The painting depicts boatmen in legendary dragon ships (drakkars), a scene drawn from Russian folklore and the Volga River.(Christian Derouet, 2007)

The composition includes a distant walled town with onion domes and white church spires rising above a wooded bank, setting the scene within a Russian landscape.(Christian Derouet, 2007)

A Russian Subject Made in Paris

The Centre Pompidou's catalogue entry, written by Christian Derouet and published in the collection catalogue of the Musée national d'art moderne, frames this small tempera within a specific moment in Kandinsky's career. According to that account, Kandinsky had established an art school in Munich between 1901 and 1903, attached to his group Phalanx, which organised exhibitions including one devoted to Monet. He then travelled through Europe for several years with his student Gabriele Münter and stayed in Paris from 1906 to 1907. It was in this period, while working at Sèvres, that he painted and engraved what the entry describes as essentially a cycle on Little Russian themes, exalting the folklore of the Russian people. The Sèvres location matters for the circumstances of production, and the cycle as a whole, rather than any single sheet, is the unit of activity the evidence supports.(Christian Derouet, 2007, Analysis)

The entry links the timing of this Russian subject to a wider Parisian appetite. It states that Russian exoticism was suddenly fashionable in Paris with the Russian exhibition organised at the Salon d'automne in 1906. That date places the painting within a rising French interest in Russian art, which the account treats as the circumstantial backdrop to Kandinsky's turn toward folk themes. The observation is about fashion in the capital, not about documented influence on Kandinsky's choices in the painting itself, and should be weighed accordingly.(Christian Derouet, 2007, Analysis)

Colour, Print and the Argument for Folk Art

Interpretation

The cultural reading of those Little Russian themes is more specific still, and should be kept distinct from the technical description. The entry interprets them as adapting William Morris's Arts and Crafts to the originality of Russian popular art, in opposition to the tsars' westernisation of the country, and as illustrating the rivalry between Saint Petersburg and Moscow. It characterises Kandinsky as a Muscovite at heart. This is an interpretive synthesis offered by the catalogue, not a documented statement of Kandinsky's intent in the painting, and it is best read as a scholarly account of what the folk choices meant within Russian cultural politics of the period.(Christian Derouet, 2007, Analysis)

At the time of the German Jugendstil, Kandinsky had created an art school in Munich between 1901 and 1903, attached to his group Phalanx, which organised exhibitions including one devoted to Monet.(Christian Derouet, 2007)

With his student Gabriele Münter, Kandinsky travelled through Europe for several years and stayed in Paris from 1906 to 1907.(Christian Derouet, 2007)

At Sèvres, Kandinsky painted and engraved essentially a cycle on Little Russian themes, exalting the folklore of the Russian people.(Christian Derouet, 2007)

Russian exoticism was suddenly fashionable in Paris with the Russian exhibition organised at the Salon d'automne in 1906.(Christian Derouet, 2007)

Kandinsky was a Muscovite at heart.(Christian Derouet, 2007)

Support and medium

The Centre Pompidou's record describes Lied (Chanson) as a tempera painting on glazed cardboard, measuring 49 by 66 centimetres. The support and medium are recorded together with the dimensions in the institutional entry, so the description of the ground as glazed cardboard and the use of tempera rest on the museum's documentation rather than on unstated examination results. The record does not describe the preparation of the cardboard, the number of layers, or any tool beyond the paint medium itself, and those details should not be assumed.(Christian Derouet, 2007, Techniques, Dimensions)

Colour handling

Within the catalogue entry, the handling of colour is described as pure colours placed side by side without mixing, a procedure the entry likens to printed images. The same unmixed, juxtaposed colour is said to recur in Scène russe, Dimanche and Vieille Russie, AM 1981-65-83, which places the technique within a group of related works rather than treating it as unique to this painting. The comparison to printed images is the catalogue's formulation, an interpretive account of how the colour operates rather than a technical analysis of pigments or application.(Christian Derouet, 2007, Analysis)

The work is a tempera painting on glazed cardboard measuring 49 by 66 centimetres.(Christian Derouet, 2007)

The colours are pure and placed side by side without mixing, as on images, a technique also used in Scène russe, Dimanche and Vieille Russie, AM 1981-65-83.(Christian Derouet, 2007)

Acquisition and the Bequest of 1981

The documented acquisition history of this tempera on glazed cardboard begins at the end of the artist's line: the painting entered the collection through the bequest of Nina Kandinsky in 1981. That bequest is the single transfer the supplied institutional record establishes, and it places the work within the modern plastic arts collection area at the Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne. The record as supplied does not itemise intermediate owners between Kandinsky's own possession of the sheet and its arrival through the 1981 bequest, so the period before that transfer must be treated as an unrecorded interval rather than a documented chain of ownership; the bequest establishes how the work came to the museum, not who held it beforehand.(Christian Derouet, 2007, Acquisition)

Two inscriptions on the work itself are independent of the museum's acquisition records and help anchor its earlier life as a circulating object. A lower-left inscription reads KANDINSKY in white gouache, and a top-right inscription reads Kandinsky, Chanson, N° 117. The presence of the title Chanson and a numbered reference on the sheet is consistent with the publicly exhibited and reproduced identity the institutional record describes for the work in the years before it entered the museum, although the record supplied does not state who applied the inscriptions or when.(Christian Derouet, 2007, Acquisition)

The painting was acquired through the bequest of Nina Kandinsky in 1981.(Christian Derouet, 2007)

Exhibition History and Titles

The exhibition record of this small tempera is compact but has two distinct phases. Under the simple title Chanson and the number 2645, the painting was presented at the Salon des Indépendants in 1907. The institutional catalogue entry treats that presentation as part of the work's early public life in Paris, and the same entry notes that the title changed: by 1913 the picture had become Chant de la Volga, a title documented in the Sturm-Album, where it is reproduced as number 30. The shift from a generic musical word to a title naming the river itself is recorded in the catalogue without further explanation, so the renaming can be stated but not accounted for.(Christian Derouet, 2007, Analysis)

Interpretation

The 1907 Salon showing can be read against the larger campaign the Centre Pompidou catalogue attributes to Kandinsky at this moment. The entry relates Chanson to Troïka and Das bunte Leben (La Vie mélangée), the large formats with which Kandinsky wished to draw Parisians' attention to his work. Within that account the small tempera was not a solitary studio experiment but one element in an effort to introduce a Russian visual language to a French audience, and the catalogue's connection between the small work and the large formats is the evidential basis for that framing rather than a claim about how the pictures were hung.(Christian Derouet, 2007, Analysis)

Current Display

Current display is a separate matter from historical exhibition history. The work is currently at Palazzo Bonaparte in Rome as part of the exhibition Kandinsky, running from 15 September 2026 to 14 February 2027. The source records this as present location and display, without describing the selection rationale or the installation, and it should be distinguished from the 1907 Salon entry and from the 1913 Sturm-Album reproduction, which are documented past events of a different kind.(Christian Derouet, 2007, Currently at)

The picture's institutional setting connects its display history to its acquisition. It belongs to the collection area of modern plastic arts (Arts Plastiques - Moderne) at the Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne, and it entered the collection through the bequest of Nina Kandinsky in 1981. The 1981 bequest therefore frames the object as part of a public national collection, while the Palazzo Bonaparte showing places it before audiences in Rome decades later; the evidence does not establish what was shown or published in the interval between these points.(Christian Derouet, 2007, Acquisition; Currently at)

Under the simple title Chanson and the number 2645, this small tempera was presented at the Salon des Indépendants in 1907 and became Chant de la Volga in 1913 (Sturm-Album, repr. 30).(Christian Derouet, 2007)

The work is currently at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, as part of the exhibition Kandinsky, 15 September 2026 to 14 February 2027.(Christian Derouet, 2007)

Paris Presentation and the Sturm-Album Renaming

Interpretation

Derouet situates Chanson within a larger campaign by relating it to Troïka and Das bunte Leben (La Vie mélangée), the large formats with which Kandinsky wished to draw Parisians' attention to his work. This is an attributed interpretation, not a claim about the artist's private motives, and it places the small tempera in a deliberate effort of self-presentation in the French capital rather than in isolation. The connection matters because it explains why a modestly scaled work on cardboard belongs to the same project as much larger paintings: the reception of the whole enterprise, not size alone, is what the comparison illuminates.(Christian Derouet, 2007, Analysis)

Little Russian Themes and the Arts and Crafts Argument

Interpretation

The Centre Pompidou catalogue reads Lied (Chanson) through the frame of Little Russian themes, which it describes as adapting William Morris's Arts and Crafts to the originality of Russian popular art. In that account the adaptation stood in opposition to the tsars' westernisation of the country and illustrated the rivalry between Saint Petersburg and Moscow, a position consistent with the catalogue's observation that Kandinsky was a Muscovite at heart. The reading is the museum's, not a statement of the painter's private intention, and it gives the folk subject and the unmixed colour a cultural argument rather than a decorative one: popular art as a source of national originality set against the imperial capital's western taste. The same catalogue places the work within a broader practice, noting that at Sèvres Kandinsky painted and engraved essentially a cycle on Little Russian themes, exalting the folklore of the Russian people. This tempera belongs to that cycle rather than standing alone.(Christian Derouet, 2007, Analysis)

A second strand of the catalogue's analysis concerns technique. It describes Kandinsky, like Bilibin or Léon Bakst, as seeking to provoke enchantment by adopting a technique in which pure colours are placed side by side without mixing, as on printed images. Enchantment is thus presented as a visual strategy rather than a vague mood. The observation unit records the same handling, noting that the colours are pure and placed side by side without mixing, as on images, a technique also used in Scène russe, Dimanche and Vieille Russie. The catalogue's comparison therefore has a documentary footing in the picture's own facture and in a group of related works, though the attribution of a deliberate aim to enchant belongs to the institution's reading. What the composition itself establishes is the setting: a distant walled town with onion domes and white church spires rising above a wooded bank, and boatmen in legendary dragon ships, the drakkars, on the Volga, a scene drawn from Russian folklore.(Christian Derouet, 2007, Analysis)

The Little Russian themes adapt William Morris's Arts and Crafts to the originality of Russian popular art, in opposition to the tsars' westernisation of the country, and illustrate the rivalry between Saint Petersburg and Moscow.(Christian Derouet, 2007)

Chanson relates to Troïka and Das bunte Leben (La Vie mélangée), the large formats with which Kandinsky wished to draw Parisians' attention to his work.(Christian Derouet, 2007)

Like Bilibin or Léon Bakst, Kandinsky seeks to provoke enchantment by adopting a technique in which pure colours are placed side by side without mixing, as on printed images.(Christian Derouet, 2007)

Institutional place and acquisition

The Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne, holds this tempera within its collection area for modern plastic arts (Arts Plastiques - Moderne). That departmental placement is the institutional frame through which the museum's own catalogue account presents the work: not as a decorative curiosity or a folkloric document, but as a modern painting subject to the same collecting, research and display structures as the rest of the modern collection. The object's entry into that collection is documented: it was acquired through the bequest of Nina Kandinsky in 1981, the artist's widow, a route of acquisition that situates the painting within the posthumous formation of the Kandinsky holdings in Paris rather than within an earlier purchase or dealer transaction. The institutional record also fixes the work's current location outside the permanent galleries: it is at Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome, as part of the exhibition Kandinsky running from 15 September 2026 to 14 February 2027, so the object's present display context is a temporary loan exhibition rather than the Musée national d'art moderne itself.(Christian Derouet, 2007, Collection area)

The work belongs to the collection area of modern plastic arts (Arts Plastiques - Moderne) at the Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne.(Christian Derouet, 2007)

Recorded values

Interpretation

The recorded values attached to the work in this archive are not market facts but a working calculation. The estimated value is given as US$1M to US$6M, recorded as a working calculation generated 2026-10-30. Its stated methodology is a broad working range for manual review only, derived conservatively from confirmed context: an authenticated early Vassily Kandinsky of 1906, tempera on glazed cardboard, 49 x 66 cm, held in the Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Pompidou, acquired via the Nina Kandinsky bequest in 1981 (inventory AM 81-65-87). The factors listed are high-confidence attribution, documented exhibition history (Salon des Indépendants 1907, Sturm-Album 1913), the Jugendstil period with Russian folklore themes, and inclusion in a major touring exhibition. The qualification is explicit: no comparable sales, auction records or private insurance data were consulted or claimed, and the figure is not an official insurance value, appraisal, auction estimate or sale price and must not be used for binding coverage or transaction decisions. Actual insurance values would require professional appraisal and confirmed replacement or market data, and the price date is set by the local system. The range should therefore be read as an internal review device keyed to the documented attribution and exhibition record, not as evidence of what the picture would fetch.(Christian Derouet, 2007)(Wikimedia Commons: Lied (Chanson) Chant de la Volga, n.d.)

Taken together, the documented record and the attributed catalogue reading support an interpretation of the tempera as a deliberate act of cultural choice expressed as much in colour and technique as in subject matter. The boatmen on the Volga carry a legend, while the painting around them, in the museum's account, carries an argument about where Russian art should look for its strength. That synthesis depends on the dated facts established above: the 1906 execution during the Paris and Sèvres period, the Little Russian cycle, the 1907 Salon presentation as Chanson, the 1913 Sturm-Album retitling, and the 1981 bequest that brought the work into the national collection. Where the evidence is silent, as on the circumstances of the Nina Kandinsky bequest beyond its date and the work's whereabouts between 1913 and 1981, this account does not fill the gap, and the values recorded for the object remain working figures for review rather than measures of its standing.(Christian Derouet, 2007)(Wikimedia Commons: Lied (Chanson) Chant de la Volga, n.d.)

Working estimate

Calculated working insurance estimate, not a sale price: Estimated value: US$1M to US$6M Recorded date: Working calculation, generated 2026-10-30. Methodology: Broad working range for manual review only, derived conservatively from confirmed context: an authenticated early Vassily Kandinsky (1906) tempera on glazed cardboard, 49 x 66 cm, held in the Musee national d'art moderne, Centre Pompidou, acquired via the Nina Kandinsky bequest in 1981 (inventory AM 81-65-87). Factors: high confidence attribution, documented exhibition history (Salon des Independants 1907, Sturm-Album 1913), Jugendstil period with Russian folklore themes, and inclusion in a major touring exhibition. The range is a wide indicative insurance-calculation band, not a market result. No comparable sales, auction records, or private insurance data were consulted or claimed. Qualification: Model-generated working range for manual review only. This is not an official insurance value, appraisal, auction estimate, or sale price, and must not be used for binding coverage or transaction decisions. Actual insurance values require professional appraisal and confirmed replacement or market data. Price date is set by the local system.(Christian Derouet, 2007)(Wikimedia Commons: Lied (Chanson) Chant de la Volga, n.d.)