Femme et paysage à l’aqueduc

Inscriptions: Signed and dated 1916 (lower right)

Provenance: Private collection (acquired in 1922, thence by descent)

Christie’s, Paris, 2 May 2012, lot 23

Notes: “If the beauty of a painting solely depends on its pictorial qualities: only taking certain elements, those that seem to suit our need for expression, then with these elements, building a new object, an object which we can adapt to the surface of the painting without subterfuge. If that object looks like something known, I take it increasingly for something of no use. For me it is enough for it to be “well done”, to have a perfect match between the parts and the whole”. (Jean Metzinger, quoted in Au temps des Cubistes, 1910-1920, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Galerie Berès, 2006, p. 432)