The Münterhaus offers a wide panoramic view of the mountains and the market town of Murnau. The townscape of Murnau is dominated by the castle and the parish church of St. Nicholas. A whole series of pictures were created from this backdrop from 1908 onwards. This series allows one to trace Gabriele Münter's stylistic development. In an early version from 1910, Münter shows the town on a dull summer day. Across the picture, a loose, dark row of trees stretches from the foreground to the middle ground - towards the houses that form a ring around the castle and church. The layer of clouds above the town appears very compact due to a black contour - almost as if it could touch the church tower. What appears to today's viewer as a simple townscape was at the time the result of intensive efforts to express, through strict reduction, no longer external visual impressions, but rather felt content. Gabriele Münter later described this process, which began in Murnau, as follows: "After a short period of agony, I made a big leap - from painting nature - more or less impressionistically - to feeling a content - to abstracting, to giving an extract." Formally, this leap takes place in a radical simplification of the shapes and colors. Münter no longer dabs or spatulas the color in fine shades; she now creates large areas separated from each other by black contours. Spatial effect and perspective lose importance as a means of true-to-life reproduction. The trees in the foreground are still colored in dabs, but then outlined with strong contour lines. Münter unifies the houses, which have been reduced to simple cubes, by giving the roofs a purple color. This further intensifies the gloomy mood of this cloudy day. To ensure that this mood does not take over and the composition does not become lacking in contrast, a red-roofed house shines out of the foreground - a small, friendly accent, which can often be found in Münter's pictures.