Fernand Léger

Konstsalong Samlaren (Agnes Widlund), Stockholm (acquired directly from the artist in 1950)
Galerie Svensk-Franska, Stockholm
Jon Österlöf, Stockholm (acquired by 1964)
Galerie Bonnier (Jan Runnqvist), Geneva (acquired in 1990)
Edward Tyler Nahem Gallery, New York
The Pace Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above on October 31, 1994

Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, Modern Konst, 1954, no. 35
Copenhagen, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Fernand Léger, Malerier, tegninger og grafik, 1959, no. 44  
Stockholm, Moderna Museet, Fernand Léger 1881-1955, 1964, no. 81

Georges Bauquier, Fernand Léger, catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre peint, 1949-1951, Paris, 2003, p. 47, no. 1339, illustrated in color 

Impressive in scale and vibrant in coloration, Le Vase jaune dans un paysage is a striking example of the art that Léger produced in the last decade of his career, and represents a summary of a life-time of pictorial experimentation. In the late 1940s Léger created a number of oils in which he broke barriers between genres, combining elements of landscape, still-life and figure painting in a single composition. In the present work, he couples objects traditionally associated with still-life painting, such as the large imposing jug and a bucket, with a landscape setting. Dominated by the trees and plants in the foreground, the otherwise rustic, gently undulating scenery is interrupted by the pronounced horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines of the frame in the upper part of the canvas, reminiscent of the scaffolding that features in numerous paintings from the series of Constructeurs, a dominant theme in the last years of Léger’s oeuvre. Executed in large blocks of bright tones, the work encapsulates Léger’s belief that it is the primary colors, combined with black and white, that express the reality of the medium of painting. Rather than representing a likeness of the world that surrounds him, the artist uses patches of color as the principal element of the composition, creating new spatial relationships within the two-dimensional plane of the canvas. The areas of bright, unmodulated pigment stand in contrast to the organic elements such as the tree and the clouds, which are rendered in a modernist version of the chiaroscuro technique. In 1950 Léger wrote: “The plastic life, the picture, is made up of harmonious relationships among volumes, lines, and colors. These are the three forces that must govern works of art. If, in organizing these three elements harmoniously, one finds that objects, elements of reality, can enter into the composition, it may be better and may give the work more richness” (quoted in C. Lanchner, Fernand Léger, New York, 1998, p. 247).

Having spent much of the war period in the United States, in 1946 Léger returned to his Paris studio at Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and to his second studio in Montrouge. “On his return to France, Léger continued the work he had begun in the United States, but now often working on much larger formats than those of his pre-war years. This penchant for the large-scale was undoubtedly an American legacy …. Léger’s great achievement during the post-war period was to conclude the experiments with color, transparency and movement that had taken specific shape in the United States. These experiments were closely bound up with the cinema, Léger trying out different media and subjects throughout this last phase of his career to achieve an extraordinary oeuvre. He had been a keen film fan ever since his first discovery of the cinema on his arrival in Paris in 1900, and with Ballet mécanique (1924) had made his own foray into the medium. Transparency and movement, framing, the play of light, and the possibilities for superimposition all intrigued him, and his pictorial experiments were dominated by ‘moving images.’ In his later works, drawing creates a framework and a pretext, while color provides dynamic structure.” (B. Hedel-Samson in Exh. cat., Basel, Fondation Beyeler, Fernand Léger: Paris – New York, Basel, 2008, p. 123) Léger’s use of color and treatment of pictorial space in turn had a strong influence on the subsequent generation of artists and played a key role in the development of Pop Art.