1942 was a year of deadlock in the military developments of the Second World War. Whilst the Soviet Union was battling the Nazis in Eastern Europe, there were repeated calls for British and American governments to launch a Second Front in Western Europe. In late 1941, Stalin had voiced a clear concern that the absence of a Second Front in the west was considerably easing the position of the German Army, who could safely divert their troops from the Western Front to other areas of conflict.

In Marianne-Maquis, Kokoschka vents his criticism of the allies’ delay in launching the Second Front in Western Europe. The British war leaders Winston Churchill and General Montgomery are shown drinking tea in the Café de Paris in Soho, apparently relaxed and carefree. The central figure, Marianne-Maquis, is the personification of French resistance to the German occupation of France. She wears a Communist red star brooch and points to a mouse scuttling to safety beneath her feet. A 'V' for victory is inscribed both in Churchill's helmet and on a poster of Hitler behind him, suggesting uncertainty as to which of the powers would eventually prevail. The combined elements of the painting appear to satirise British military and political inactivity at a critical period of the war.

Kokoschka was a Czech citizen born in Austria. He abhorred nationalism and was politically active, spending much of his time in London making speeches, fundraising and writing articles for anti-Nazi refugee newspapers. Marianne-Maquis was one of a series of five pictures attacking the war and conduct of both axis and allied powers which Kokoschka painted between 1940 and 1943 whilst living in London.

Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) was born in Austria. He lived and worked in Austria, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Britain and Switzerland.