The Milliner’s Shop, 1913 Painting is one of those arts where the best get better as they age. Hokusai wrote that none of the drawings he did before his 70th birthday were worth considering. And he had a point. Macke painted the above in a few short years. Such confidence, so young. What could have been? A year after The Milliner’s Shop he was drafted into the German Army. The artists of the Western World had called for the destruction of the old world. Sub-consciously the empires that protected them agreed. As if by compulsion, they committed group suicide. The trenches were dug and August was posted to the French province of Champagne. A few weeks later he was dead, killed in action. Mowed down alongside two hundred-thousand anonymous others. He was 27 years old. His last work, the gloom of which brings Kirchner to mind, was called “Farewell”. (https://stillchaos.wordpress.com/2010/08/31/the-death-of-august-macke/)