Albert Gleizes

Acquired directly from the artist by the grandfather of the present owner

According to Anne Varichon, "this work evinces Gleizes' very first researches into Cubism. Its treatment of surfaces corresponds with other works from 1910, such as Le Petit chemin (see: Anne Varichon, Albert Gleizes, Catalogue raisonné, Paris, 1998, no. 354).

From this date onwards, Gleizes, recently acquainted with Metzinger, Léger, and Robert and Sonia Delaunay, began like them to investigate structure and form in his painting. In the present work, for instance, the volumes of table, tablecloth, the vase and the book are juxtaposed using different viewpoints. Such radical distortion of perspective gives the impression that the objects are breaking through the picture plane into the viewer's space. It is to this quiet revolution - which room 41 of the 1911 Salon des Indépendants would soon explode into the public consciousness -that Nature morte bears witness.

Analysis under X-ray shows Gleizes to have developed the composition over a charcoal underdrawing, disseminating tiny grains of gold about the highly worked picture surface.

Still lives by Gleizes dating from the early 1910s are exceptionally rare. The only other known comparable work was previously in the Kunstausstellung der Sturm in Berlin and disappeared in 1937 (see: ibid., no. 378)."