Juan Gris

Maurice Raynal, Paris
Juliette Cramer, Paris
Knoedler & Co., New York
Fine Arts Associates, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Juan Gris, His Life and Work, London, 1947, pl. 83
Douglas Cooper, Juan Gris, Catalogue Raisonné de l'Œuvre Peint, Paris, 1977, vol. II, no. 497, illustrated p. 319

The canvas is lined. There is a thick layer of varnish preventing UV light from fully penetrating, however UV examination does reveal two small areas of retouching near the outline of the two apples. There is a further small area to the lower edge towards the right and minor retouching to the upper and lower right corners. Overall this work is in good condition. Overall the colours in the printed catalogue are fairly accurate.
"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. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

In the years following World War I, Juan Gris moved away from his earlier more complex Cubist compositions, and embraced a pared down, more elegant style, which was largely influenced by the rappel à l'ordre that influenced most of the Parisian avant-garde art during the post-war years.  The subject of still-life remained Gris's favorite motif, and in the present work he depicted one of the key elements of Cubist iconography – a newspaper.  Writing about this period in Gris's painting, Douglas Cooper and Gary Tinterow wrote that he 'abandoned the late "synthetic"Cubist style that he had developed since 1916 in favour of a more fluid, "poetic" style of painting, in which he preserved much of the essential pictorial discipline of Cubism and of his own methods of non-illusionistic representation which he had been developing from the start of his career" (The Essential Cubism (exhibition catalogue), Tate Gallery, London, 1983, p. 178).

Reflecting on Gris's œuvre, Mark Rosenthal writes the following: 'Gertrude Stein called Juan Gris "a perfect painter", and it is not difficult to appreciate her characterization. In a painting by him we find an intensely satisfying, hermetic relationship of pictorial elements, one balanced by the next and then another, until the subtlety of resonance reaches an exquisite pitch. The pictures demonstrate an equally refined relationship between the abstract play of forms and their starting point in the natural world.  This dialectic unites, too, the theoretically pure image of an object and the existence of it as witnessed by an individual in time and space.  Thus, if perfection represents, among other things, wholeness, purity, and the achievement of an absolute, then Gris's finest works are worthy of the appellation 'perfect'" (Mark Rosenthal, Juan Gris, New York, 1983, p. 9).

Les Pommes was previously in the collection of Maurice Raynal, an important art historian and critic, who specialised on Cubism. Raynal was also one of Gris's closest friends with whom he maintained a correspondence for decades. According to Raynal, Gris 'must have a subject and it is from the subject that he makes his painting' (as quoted in, Juan Gris (exhibition catalogue), University of California Art Museum, Berkeley; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. & The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1983-84, p. 141).