Wassily Kandinsky's painting "Rapallo - White Sails" and Gabriele Münter's "Sailboats in the Water", with an almost identical motif and created at the same time, tell of the two artists' stay together on the Italian Riviera. The works, created on their travels before their first joint painting stay in Murnau in 1908 with their friends Alexej von Jawlensky and Marianne von Werefkin, are recognizable as late impressionist works. The oil paint, applied impasto with a spatula, lets the sunlight break in the rippled waves, their appearance borrowed from nature. In search of a "southern winter", according to Wassily Kandinsky, they reached Rapallo one day before Christmas Eve 1905 and stayed until April 30, 1906. "The sun was beautiful there - and the sea, and a few tours through the mountains [...]", as Gabriele Münter later recalled. Here they tried out living together for several months before living together in Munich and Murnau. They had rented a spacious house with the sonorous name “Casa Valle Bella”. It was on the no less pleasant “Via Montebello”, but number 24 (the house number of their holiday home) was directly opposite a railway crossing with a bell. A postcard from Gabriele Münter to her niece Annemarie shows a picture of the house, with the addition: “Uncle Was sends his regards!” The long-awaited “painting time” led to a new understanding between Kandinsky and Münter; it was probably the most untroubled time they spent together. Gabriele Münter had her bike sent to Genoa, “because without a bike you are only half a person.”