拍品 33
  • 33

費爾南·雷捷

估價
5,000,000 - 7,000,000 USD
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招標截止

描述

  • 費爾南·雷捷
  • 《紅色桌旁的三女子》
  • 款識:畫家簽名 F. LÉGER 並紀年21(右下);題款並簽名 F. LÉGER(背面)
  • 油彩畫布
  • 21 1/2 x 32英寸
  • 54.5 x 81.3公分

來源

Galerie Simon, Paris

Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris

E. & A. Silberman Galleries, New York

Helen & William Mazer Foundation (sold: Sotheby's, New York, May 17, 1990, lot 41)

Acquired at the above sale

展覽

New York, Acquavella Galleries, Inc., Fernand Léger, 1987, no. 25, illustrated in color in the catalogue

出版

"Architectural Digest Visits: Madonna," Architectural Digest, October 1991, New York, illustrated in situ p. 206

Georges Bauquier, Fernand Léger, Catalogue raisonné, 1920-1924, no. 299, 1992, Paris, illustrated in color

Condition

Very good condition. Original canvas. There are a few stable cracks in the center of the composition, which have been slightly retouched and only can be seen under UV light. There are also some dots of retouching in the center of right side, lower left corner and upper left and lower right quadrants. Overall, the colors are fresh and composition is in very good condition.
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.

拍品資料及來源

Trois femmes à la table rouge was created at the dawning of the Roaring Twenties. The picture exemplifies the stylistic refinement and sleek, linear sophistication that characterized the era.   Léger’s highly mechanized rendering of three women positioned at a table is one of the most compelling renditions of the theme that would ultimately give rise to the grand painting at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Le Grand Déjeuner (fig. 2). Léger was renowned for his series paintings, from his Contrastes de formes in the 1910s to his Constructeurs of the 1950s, but the paintings of the Le Grand Déjeuner series are his most recognizable works and the standard bearer of the streamlined, Modernist aesthetic that defined the avant-garde movement known as Purism during the early 1920s. The present picture is a superb example of the stylistic themes that dominate this period of his career.

Léger was celebrated among the Parisian avant-garde as one of the original Cubists, along with Picasso and Braque, but his painting took a new direction after the war.   What he had witnessed on the battlefront had forced him to re-prioritize his artistic objective so that clarity of form, or respect for modern life,  would reign supreme in his compositions.  "I had broken down the human body, so I set about putting it together again," Leger would recall of this period.  "I wanted a rest, a breathing space.  After the dynamism of the mechanical period, I felt a need for the stativity of large figures" (quoted in Fernand Léger, Man in the New Age (exhibition catalogue), Arken Museum of Modern Art, 2005, p. 20).   By the 1920s, the severe abstraction of his pre-war compositions gave way to streamlined figuration, and his paintings depicted the human form amidst a booming industrial era.  His most significant advancement towards this objective came with his series, Le Grand Déjeuner, in which the figures of women become central to his compositional narrative. 

In Trois femmes à la table rouge, the subject of three women sharing a meal exemplifies the ease of living made possible in the age of modernity.  Stylistically, it is a work that encompasses the formal principles of high Modernism and introduces the themes that would dominate his paintings in the years to come. In this painting, large geometric forms are stacked against each other, giving the composition smoothness and flatness while maintaining depth through the dynamic interplay of shapes and forms.  Throughout this series Léger experimented with degrees of abstraction, compartmentalizing and reconfiguring the bodies but never loosing sight of their definining silhouettes (figs. 3, 4).   In a related work and in the present picture, the smooth circles and soft curves of the women are contrasted by the straight edges and rectangles that compose the background.

With Trois femmes à la table rouge, Léger has encapsulated the concerns of the French avant-garde and their attempt to “call to order” their art after the Great War.  Like Picasso, who also reintroduced figures into his painting at this time, Léger focuses on the beauty of linear precision.  Using sharp outlining and solid formations to compose the bodies of this figures, he emphasizes the legibility and clarity of each woman in a manner that calls to mind the neo-classical beauties of the great French painters of the early 19th century.  Indeed, Léger, as well as Picasso, was concerned with aligning himself with the artists of his great Latinate past.   The present  work in particular is reminiscent of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s Odalisque en Grisaille, both for its use of muted grays and for its orderly and beautifully linear compositional style.  As such, it “reflects Léger’s urge towards a new classicism; by taking up a theme sanctioned by tradition, he hoped to integrate art history, as well as past time, into the present” (Robert Herbert, Léger’s Le Grand Déjeuner, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Detroit, 1980, p. 13).