Nu aux hortensias

Inscriptions: Signed (lower right)

Provenance: Ader Picard Tajan, Monte Carlo, 9 October 1977, lot 66

Maurice Sternberg Galleries, Chicago.

Private collection (acquired from the above).

Sotheby’s, New York, 10 May 1995, lot 346.

Tajan, Paris, 16 avril 1996, lot 167.

Private collection (acquired at the above sale)

Christie’s. Paris, 9 June 2006, lot 4

Exhibitions: Exposition d’œuvre récentes et anciennes de Jean Metzinger, Galerie Hessel, Paris, 26 May – 10 June 1943, cat. no. 3.

Les Années 30 à Paris, Musée d’art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Les Années 30 à Paris, February – May 1997, no. 10, reproduced color plate. 

Notes: Nu aux Hortensias is a cultivated and elegant example of Metzinger’s mid-1930s inventions. Primarily painted in a cool gray, yellow highlights for the model, and pinks for the hortensia (or hydrangea), add to the overall Delphian glow of this painting. Here, as in most of Metzinger’s works spanning his entire career, there is a marked bilateral symmetry (or mirror-image symmetry) driving the composition, the axis placed right through the vertical center of the canvas; with the chair and figure flanked on either side.