Jean Metzinger

The present drawing relates directly to the painting titled La fumeuse painted in 1913-14 which is painted in a bolder manner using a wide range of brighter colors. Color reasserts its importance as a critical compositional, decorative and expressive device by 1912, as Metzinger did in his 1910-1911 works. In this composition as with others executed at the same time, Metzinger was experimenting with a greater abstraction of form and flattening of space. All female portraits of the time, such as La Fumeuse, are apparently of Mme. Metzinger, suggesting a personality development from a sweet and modest young woman to a more urbane, mature and sophisticated woman.

Fig. 1 Jean Metzinger, La Fumeuse (The Smoker), 1913-14, oil on canvas, Collection Margit and Rolf Weinberg, Switzerland