Salomé

Inscriptions: Signed (lower right)

Provenance: Léonce Rosenberg, Galerie l’Effort Moderne, Paris.

Roger Walther, Hôtel Drouot, 24 October 1927, lot 111.

Galerie Philippe Reichenbach, Houston, Texas.

Literature: Bulletin de L’Effort Moderne, December 1924, No. 10, reproduced (titled Salomé).

Joann Moser, Daniel Robbins, Jean Metzinger in Retrospect, The University of Iowa Museum of Art, 1985, no. 200, p. 111, reproduced.

Notes: Salomé essentially was a continuation of an array of works initiated at the outset of the 1920s. Metzinger’s lines, textures, tones and colors became more precise, contrasted, machine-like. Yet despite the mechanical treatment of his subjects, Metzinger was able to capture in Salomé—something observably absent in the works of others from his entourage—the erotic sensuality and feminine delicateness of his model, strengthening the ambiguity of the picture which takes pleasure in exposing debauchery without the pretext of condemning it.