Jean Metzinger Catalogue Raisonné
Number: AM-13-010.5 Jean Metzinger
Date: 1913-14
Title: Still Life (Composition à la carafe et au verre de vin)
Medium: Charcoal on buff paper
Dimensions: 54 x 42.5 cm
Inscriptions: Signed (lower right)
Collection: Galerie Berès, Paris
Provenance: Margit Chanin, New York
Sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet Inc., New York, 17 March 1976, lot 78
The Joan and Lester Avnet Collection, New York
Sidney Janis Gallery, New York
Galerie Berès, Paris
Exhibitions: Jean Metzinger in Retrospect, The University of Iowa Museum of Art, 31 August – 13 October 1985; The Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, University of Texas, Austin, 10 November – 22 December 1985; The David and Alfred Smart Gallery, University of Chicago, 23 January – 9 March 1986; Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA, 29 March – 25 May 1986, no. 79, p. 69.
Cubist Drawings 1907-1929, Janie C. Lee Gallery, Houston, Texas, November 1982 – January 1983, 39, p. 33 reproduced.
Au temps des Cubistes 1910-1920, Galerie Berès, Paris, 19 October 2006 – 29 January 2007, n. 178, pp. 425-426, reproduced.
Literature: Jean Metzinger in Retrospect, The University of Iowa Museum of Art, cat. no. 79, p. 69, reproduced (as 1911-12)
Notes: Composition à la carafe et au verre de vin is related to Still Life (AM-13-010), by the proximity of the glass and vase on the right side of the painting. However, the charcoal on buff paper does not appear to be a preparatory study for the painting but rather a work of art in its own right. The two works are similar in dimensions. The glass and vase of the charcoal are seen from multiple viewpoints (from the side and above), but the principal axis is horizontal. The two objects on the right of the painting are seen principally from a raised oblique angle (as if from above) in addition to various other viewpoints.
The 1976 Sotheby Parke Bernet sale catalogue states that this charcoal on paper was exhibited in Barcelona at the Gallery Dehman in 1920-22. This is unconfirmed. There is a possibility that it was exhibited at Les Galleries Dalmau in Barcelona, 1920-22, as the Dalmau gallery kept several works on paper by Metzinger in their collections during this period, such as Paysage, 1911-12, AM-11-023, and Nature morte, 1918-19, AM-18-002. The latter was exhibited in the Exposición de Arte francés de Vanguardia, Galeries Dalmau, Barcelona, 1920, cat. no. 52, reproduced (dated 1919). Though Composition à la carafe et au verre de vin does not figure in the catalogue, it may have been in the exhibition. Works on paper were not always listed by Dalmau in their respective catalogues.