Juan Gris

Galerie Kahnweiler, Paris (sold: 2ème vente Kahnweiler, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, November 17-18, 1921, lot 240)

Galerie Simon, Paris (stock no. 9.073)

Ronald Fleming, London (January 1926)

Douglas Cooper, London and Argilliers (by 1939)

William A. McCarty-Cooper (inherited from the above and sold: Christie's, New York, May 11, 1992, lot 19)

Private Collection, New York

Private Collection, Seattle

Acquired by the present owner from the above in November 1996

Basel, Kunstmuseum; London, The Tate Gallery; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Douglas Cooper and the Masters of Cubism, 1987-88, no. 14 

Houston, The Museum of Fine Arts; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Picasso, Braque, Gris, Léger: Douglas Cooper collecting Cubism, 1990-91, no. 17

New York, The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York Collects: Drawings and Watercolors, 1900-1950, 1999, no. 28

Madrid, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Juan Gris Retrospective, Paintings and Drawings 1910-1927, 2005, no. 180

Nature morte avec bouteille et cigares is one of the first examples of the use of collage in a Cubist composition.  Gris, along with Picasso and Braque, was one of the pioneers of Cubism and the use of collage.  He had been experimenting with the Cubist technique of fragmenting and deconstructing images since his arrival in Paris in 1910, and in the years immediately before the war he became one of the movement's most influential members.    In his paintings and drawings from 1910-12, he focused on the geometry of bottles and glasses (see fig. 1), examining how the most complex shapes could be broken down into simple series of parallel and diagonal lines.  By 1912, Gris' investigation of form lead him to a clearer, more legible interpretation of the Cubist aesthetic, and, like Picasso (see fig. 2), he began to use cut and pasted paper as a way to add dimension and enhance the materiality of his compositions.  No one explained the reasoning behind this approach better than Gris himself: “I work with elements of the intellect, with the imagination.  I try to make concrete that which is abstract, I proceed from the general to the particular….Cézanne turns a bottle into a cylinder…I make a bottle – a particular bottle – out of a cylinder” (quoted in Jean Sutherland Boggs, Picasso and Things (exhibition catalogue), The Cleveland Museum of Art; The Philadephia Museum of Art; Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 1992, p. 132). 

One of the ways that Gris decoded the essential geometry of objects was by revealing that all forms could be plotted and reconstructed within the confines of grids and overlapping planes.  In the present picture, he strips the labels of a bottle of wine and a box of cigars and redefines them as an assemblage of rectangles and triangles.  He uses overlapping, vertical lines to cut and shift compositional perspective, but he never compromises the legibility of the object in his composition.  Following the success of the present composition, Gris continued to employ this vertical structuring device and explored the relationship between word and image, and vertical orientation became the key organizing principle of the paintings executed the following year (see figs. 3 and 4). 

Douglas Cooper, the legendary scholar and collector of cubist masterpieces (and the former owner of the present work), has further expounded upon Gris’  methods as follows:

“Gris’ linear framework of square, triangles and cylinders – which he imposed over his subject like the leads in a stained-glass window – derived in part from his formal division of the canvas and in part also from the outlines of objects represented.  Within the compartments of this framework, Gris included realistic details and separate aspects of whatever was represented. He thus assembled a total image out of static partial aspects and left the spectator to re-integrate the whole for himself by visual-intellectual synthesis.  This was a personal interpretation of the analytical procedure of early Cubism, and Gris went further than either Braque or Picasso in the number of views in section, plan and elevation which he managed to combine” (Douglas Cooper, The Cubist Epoch, London, 1970 (reprint 1994), pp. 200-201).

Gris' expansion and vitalization of the Cubist style attracted the attention of the leading members of the avant-garde.   The legendary Gertrude Stein identified Gris' place among the Cubists in no uncertain terms: “The only real Cubism is that of Picasso and Juan Gris. Picasso created it and Juan Gris permeated it with his clarity and exaltation” (Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, New York, 1933, p. 111).

With regard to the present picture, Marilyn McCully has described the relationship of Gris' technique to that of Picasso and Braque.  She points out that the present work explores the Cubism idiom in a more bold and dynamic manner: "The various elements in Gris' composition, including an open box of cigars and a bottle of wine on a tabletop, are dissected in a much more literal way than either Picasso or Braque would have done.  Gris then organized the divided, vertical strips and other diagonally placed shapes into a tight framework.  The effect is to allow the eye to make a dynamic reconstruction of the component parts of the image.  His particular handling of the essentially flat shapes -- some of them carefully colored with pencil or crayon or filled-in with black ink -- reflects the illustrator's practice of creating unified, textured areas for translation into mechanical tints.  The fragments of lettering, another typical Cubist device, also occupy two of the narrow strips and establish a sense of space, for they appear as if they were labels pasted on the objects with which they are associated" (Marilyn McCully, New York Collects: Drawings and Watercolors, 1900-1950 (exhibition catalogue), op. cit., p. 86).

For a related composition by Picasso of the same year, see lot 6.

Fig. 1,  Juan Gris, Bouteilles et bol, 1911, pencil on paper, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon COMP: 125NY8125

Fig. 2, Pablo Picasso, Bouteille et verre, late 1912, charcoal, drawing and pasted newspaper on paper, The Menil Collection, Houston COMP: 130NY8125

Fig. 3, Juan Gris, Le Livre, February 1913, oil and papier collé on canvas, Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris COMPS: 178NY8125

Fig. 4, Juan Gris, La Chope de bière et les cartes, April 1913, oil and papier collé on canvas, Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio.  COMP: 179NY8125