Marc (1880-1916) was a leading German Expressionist and a founder-member of the Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) group in 1911. These artists sought to express subjective emotions rather than objective reality, although most of their work remained basically figurative. With his fellow artist, the Russian Wassily Kandinsky, Marc strongly upheld spiritual values. He believed in the primacy of intuition and instinct over reason, and this is expressed in his marked preferenceof animals to human beings as subject-matter. Many of his images are of animals, and where people do appear, they are depicted in harmony with nature, as is this sleeping shepherdess.