At the relatively advanced age of nearly thirty, Vasily Vasilievich Kandinsky abandoned a burgeoning career as a teacher of law in Moscow to take up studies as a painter. In 1896 he moved to Munich to study, enrolling in the private art academy established by the Slovenian painter Anton Ažbe, where he joined a number of other Russian artists, including Marianne von Werefkin and Alexej Jawlensky. Having failed the entrance examination to the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in 1898, Kandinsky was accepted the following year and there studied with Franz von Stuck, alongside Paul Klee.

By 1900 he was exhibiting his work at the Moscow Artist’s Association, and the following year was a founder member of an artist’s association known as Pha...