With her return to Murnau in 1931, a new productive phase began for Münter. She created paintings with strong color intensity that were reminiscent of the time of the "Blue Rider". In the art historian Johannes Eichner, the painter found a new partner who intervened in her life in a caring and orderly but also very decisive way. He encouraged her to paint and gave her, as she herself put it, "instructions for what is commercially useful". In the biography of Kandinsky and Münter that he wrote, Eichner described his own role as follows: "He was immediately captivated by Münter's personality, moved by her fate, and touched by her loneliness. He grew into an understanding of her art, replaced her audience, was her critic, looked after her exhibitions, took control of her financial resources and led her life into order.” Eichner’s influence is also evident in the painting “Misty Sun at the Lake”: Framed by two mighty trees, some of which are already autumnally colored, Münter depicts the evening view over meadows and the Staffelsee near Murnau - bordered by blue-black hills, mountains and cloud chains layered one behind the other. Slightly off-center, the red-orange sun hangs over the mountain chain. Interrupted by wisps of fog, its reflection lies as a red stripe over the lake. Despite the very distinctive contour lines of the trees and mountains, Münter does not place clearly defined areas of color next to each other in contrast, as in her early, expressionist phase, but works out the color variations much more finely. This creates a painterly mood picture in which the striking red color accent is just as present among the blue, green and brown tones as the decorative horse placed in the foreground. While Münter had previously painted almost entirely open foregrounds in which lines are cut and forking paths openly lead towards the viewer, here she chose the more pleasing solution of a staffage figure in the foreground and the trees framing the picture. The lake motif met Eichner's commercial ideas so well that it could subsequently be sold in several versions. The same motif was even reordered 30 years later. However, the artist was aware that she was making concessions that were far removed from her expectations: "I paint the bright, so popular lake motif, almost arts and crafts, that is the motif that I can transform into something useful here and there," noted Gabriele Münter in October 1934.