Auguste Herbin

Painted in 1912, Pont sur l'Oise à Vadencourt is an iconic example of Herbin’s Cubist period.  It was here in this small French village near the border with Belgium that Herbin painted his famous series of landscapes that defined his departure from Fauvism and his preference for a geometric style.

Influenced by both Cézanne’s retrospective exhibition at the 1907 Salon d’Automne and the new style being developed by Picasso and Braque, Herbin translated the objects he was painting into cylinders, cones and spheres.  He stood out from his contemporaries by fusing the bright colors of his Fauvist landscapes with the more somber palette of browns and dark greens that characterized early Cubist painting.  His inventive and energetic approach to the Cubist landscape created some of the most dynamic canvases of his career and garnered him a position as a pioneer of the synthetic form of Cubism.  The present work was exhibited in 1914 at the Galerie Clovis Sagot, one of the first galleries to show Picasso's work and the first gallery to organize a one man show of Herbin's painting.