Even during Kirchner's time in Dresden and Berlin, human physiognomy, posture and a wide variety of movements were at the heart of his work. With great observational skills, the artist captured the anatomy and fleeting or complex movements of his models in just a few dynamic lines on paper, canvas and printing blocks. Throughout his life, Kirchner had an enormous fascination for dance, but the artist also pursued his early interest in movement and the human body by depicting other sporting activities. Kirchner's motifs include archery, equestrian sports, motorcycling and ski jumping (Kirchner Museum, Davos), racing and cycling (Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main), ice skating (Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt), ice hockey (Staatsgalerie Stuttgart), acrobats on the trapeze, broad-shouldered wrestlers (Cleveland Museum of Art, etc.) and rowers.

The present watercolor from the late 1920s already shows a similar, albeit independent composition as the painting "Ruderer" (1928/29, Gordon 916), which was created at almost the same time. The male figures placed in front of a river landscape with a bridge wear sportswear typical of rowers, however, they are arranged in different groups as in the painting. The boat occupied by only one person, which will eventually fill the entire upper half of the pictorial surface in the painting, and an athlete with a stooped posture who is about to take up his oar, are already clearly worked out. Kirchner captured the architecture, the boat and especially the dynamic, powerful bodies of the rowers with a few characteristic brushstrokes before painting the scenery in a variety of colors. It was at this time that Kirchner began to treat the form in a completely two-dimensional way for the first time. Kirchner solved the problem of depicting depth and the distance between foreground and background in the surface: the river and the rowing boat are placed in the foreground in the top right corner in the same size as the figures. This marks the beginning of a completely new stylistic development in Kirchner's artistic work. [CH]