Max Weber 1881 - 1961

Estate of the artist
The Downtown Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1965

New York, American Academy of Arts and Letters; Boston, Massachusetts, Boston University Art Gallery, Max Weber Memorial Exhibition: Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture, January-March 1962, no. 24
New York, The Downtown Gallery, 36^th Spring Annual: The Figure, May-June 1962, no. 54
Baltimore, Maryland, The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1914: An Exhibition of Paintings Drawings and Sculpture Created in 1914 in Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Baltimore Museum of Art, October-November 1964, no. 236, p. 95

Frank Seiberling, Vintage Moderns: American Pioneer Artists: 1903-1932, Iowa City, Iowa, 1962, no. 73, p. 28

This work is in very good condition. The canvas is lined. Under UV: there is no apparent inpainting.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Painted in 1914, Interior with Figures dates to the most innovative period of Max Weber’s career. During this time he was integrating the influences of his three year stay in Paris with the vitality of the dynamic city he found upon his return to New York in 1908. In Paris, “Weber assumed an active role within the circle of expatriates. He helped start a class under the tutelage of Henri Matisse and was one of the founding members of Edward Steichen’s New Society of American Artists, along with Alfred Maurer, Patrick Henry Bruce, and John Marin. He was introduced to African sculpture by Matisse and began to collect Japanese prints, no doubt in homage to [Arthur Wesley] Dow’s teachings on Orientalism. In this highly sophisticated European avant-garde milieu, Weber’s associations were particularly rich, and a far cry from his experiences in Brooklyn or in Duluth” (Susan Krane, Max Weber: The Cubist Decade, 1910-1920, Atlanta, Georgia, 1991, p. 14).

Weber remained on the forefront of American interest in European art and expression, and developed his own form of cubism which he applied to the still life and figure subjects that had preoccupied him until that time. Alfred Stieglitz featured Weber, along with other progressive American artists such as Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Alfred H. Maurer and John Marin, in the landmark exhibition Younger American Painters, presented at his gallery ‘291’ in March 1910.  The exhibition revealed to the public for the first time the revolutionary nature of the work of these modernist painters. Percy North writes, “Weber’s inclusion in Young American Painters established him as a renegade artist with an unusually innovative vision. When Weber’s works did not appear at the Independents exhibition organized by the realists in March of 1910, Arthur Hoeber wrote: ‘They are independent enough, but we miss the name Max Weber, even more independent than any of the foregoing, and we wonder why he is left out of the group. Perhaps he would make the rest look conventional. We opine he would. At any rate no true Independent show would be complete without him…’” (Ibid., p. 22).