Nature Morte

Inscriptions: Signed lower right

Provenance: Mme. Suzanne Metzinger, Paris
Galerie André Maurice, Paris
Jacob Goldscmidt
Coleman Art Gallery, Philadelphia
Acquired from the above 28 April 1959
Sotheby’s, New York, 8 November 2006, lot 128

Exhibitions: New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery, Neo-Impressionists and Nabis, 1965, no. 17, reproduced p. 59

Tokyo, National Museum of Modern Art and Kyoto, Municipal Museum of Art, Pointillism, 1985, no. 79, reproduced p. 130

Iowa City, Iowa Museum of Art, Jean Metzinger in Retrospect, 1985, no. 1

Literature: Apollo Magazine, March 1965, p. 240, reproduced no. 2

Joann Moser, Jean Metzinger in Retrospect, The University of Iowa Museum of Art, 1985, reproduced no. 1, p. 36

Fritz Metzinger, Avant le Cubisme, Vor dem Kubismus, Before Cubism, Frankfurt, 1994, no. 8

Notes: Here, the influence of Cézanne is not so much in the brushstrokes as in the perspective. Though the table bares the signature of standard 2-point perspective, the fruit bowl and glass appear as if they are pictorially dislocated from the surface upon which they are placed (as if they may fall off at any moment). This gem of a painting, although modest in dimension and classic in subject matter, is rather unique in its combination of Cézannesque geometry with a purely Divisionist brushstroke along with a quasi-Fauve combination of warm colors and cool reflections. This work, despite its modest size, was already beyond not just the preoccupations of Signac and Cross, but beyond too the preoccupations of his avant-garde camaraderie.