Der heilige Georg

During the last years of his life, Marées worked simultaneously on four monumental three-part paintings. One of these, formerly in the Nationalgalerie, has been lost since 1945; the three others are owned by the Neue Pinakothek in Munich. The Three Riders is the only one of the four that recalls the religious origins of the triptych, with its depictions of St. Martin, St. Hubert, and St. George, showing three forms of virtue. The picture in the Nationalgalerie is the one remaining wing of a first version of this work. By slaying the drag on, the Roman soldier George liberated a town whose residents then had themselves baptized to express their gratitude. Marées, who had been trained in Berlin and Munich as an equestrian and military artist, considered that the horse on the first version of the triptych was “rather like a rocking horse” — perhaps referring to the almost abstract play of the diagonal lines, and the strict, relief-like plasticity of the rider, who seems to glow against the evening landscape with the intense colors of a stained glass window. In a small er work in the Nationalgalerie, Marées painted the dragon- slayer with his own features.