Paysage

Inscriptions: Signed (lower right)

Provenance: Sale, Laurin-Guilloux-Buffetaud-Tailleur, Palais d’Orsay, Paris, 19 June 1979, lot 56

Sotheby Park Bernet & Co., London, 2 July 1980, lot 200 (c.1906, according to Suzanne Metzinger)

Expositions: Jean Metzinger in Retrospect, The University of Iowa Museum of Art, 1985, catalogue no. 22, p. 42 (titled Landscape, dated c.1909)

Notes: By 1908 Metzinger’s concerns for color that had assumed a primary role both as a decorative and expressive device before 1908 had given way to the primacy of form; and soon thereafter with complex multiple views of the subject matter. Clearly manifest in this Landscape—as his pre-1908 works—was Metzinger’s refusal of the Renaissance perspective system, and his definitive departure from Divisionism.

In 1908, as a resident of Montmartre, Metzinger frequented Picasso and Braque but remained guided above all by his understanding of Paul Cézanne.