Robert Delaunay

V.G. Krichevsky, Paris (acquired circa 1911-12)
Richard Goetz, Paris & New York
Mr & Mrs Walter Bareiss, Greenwich, Connecticut
E.V. Thaw & Co., Inc., New York
Acquired from the above by the late owner

Paris, Cours-la-Reine, Société des Artistes Indépendants, 1910, no. 4358 (titled Eglise) 
Paris, Galerie Barbazanges, Les Peintres: R. Delaunay – Marie Laurencin, 1911-12, no. 22
Berlin, Galerie Der Sturm, 12^th Exhibition: Robert Delaunay, 1913, no. 9 (as dating from 1910)
Budapest, Müvészház, Nemzetközi Postimpresszionista Kiallitas, 1913, no. 49
Chicago, The Arts Club of Chicago, Robert Delaunay, 1952, no. 1
New York, Museum of Modern Art, 50 Selections from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Bareiss, 1958, no. 16
New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery, Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture Collected by Yale Alumni, 1960, no. 101
Munich, Neue Staatsgalerie, Sammlung Walter Bareiss, 1965, p. 15

In La Flèche de Notre-Dame, Robert Delaunay employs a theme that would become central in his exploration of Cubism and its application to the scale of landscapes. The structural complexity of monuments such as Notre-Dame and the Eiffel Tower, and their relation to the cityscape of Paris appealed to the artist. Delaunay depicted these sites either from memory or from postcards (fig. 1), and in approaching them from a unique and highly innovative perspective, he was able to extract dramatic contrasts and spatial relationships. In the present work, he pivots the composition around the central spire of the Cathedral, allowing the line of sight to extend across the front roof and then follow the river Seine as it recedes into the distance. The perpendicular lines of the transept roof are complemented by those of the Seine’s bridges in the distance, and the aggressive jab of the dark spire rises above these intersecting lines into contrast with the soft lines of Paris in the background.

Le Flèche de Notre-Dame was one of Delaunay’s early explorations of this theme. This painting presents a deeper palette and a closer attention to lines of boundary – an element that would change as his experimentations became more abstract. Delaunay’s Cubist deconstruction of the subject matter bears similarities with Cézanne’s approach, while acknowledging the cubist technique of Picasso and Braque. He simplified form and colour into a series of interlocking colour blocks, providing a blurring of the lines between foreground and background. Although the Cathedral appears to be the subject of the composition, the cityscape behind it has a clear spatial dominance that challenges the customary role of the background. With its treatment of colour and form, this work represents an important stage in Delaunay’s development of the theory of simultaneity and the subsequent arrival at Orphism. As the artist himself wrote: ‘Light in Nature creates movement of colors. The movement is provided by the relationships of uneven measures, of color contrasts among themselves and constitutes Reality. This reality is endowed with depth (we see as far as the stars) and thus becomes rhythmic Simultaneity’ (R. Delaunay, Du Cubisme à l’Art abstrait, Paris, 1957, p. 146).

Fig. 1, A contemporary postcard showing the spire of Notre-Dame