The heterogeneous youthful work of the secondary school pupil and apprentice in decorative painting included drawings and pastels (mostly in sketchbooks) as well as a few paintings in the Impressionist style after 1907. In addition to a highly developed sense of color, these first works are notable for their laborious striving for graphic structuring and conciseness. The influence of Ernst Haeckel's nature aesthetic can be seen in preliminary decorative designs. Around 1909/10 the romanticism of Jugendstil displaces the naive representationalism of the young Dix.