Jean Metzinger

Jean Metzinger Paysage à l'arbre rond Around 1906 Oil on card on panel, (inlaid). 20.8 x 26.5 cm. Framed under glass. Signed 'Metzinger' (joined) lower left in grey. - Partly with fine craquelure. Provenance Collection Bénézit, Paris; Galerie Salis & Vértes, Zürich; Collection Corboud, long-term loan to Wallraf-Richartz-Museum - Fondation Corboud, Cologne (frame label) Exhibitions Cologne 2001 (Wallraf-Richartz-Museum - Fondation Corboud), Miracle de la couleur, p. 426f; Rotterdam 2003 (Kunsthal), Miracle de la couleur – Meesterwerken uit de Fondation Corboud (frame label verso) Jean Metzinger’s painting is rooted in a neo-impressionist approach that led him to an initial artistic high point between 1905 and 1908. These late impressionist, divisionist compositions featuring precisely lined-up dabs of paint already herald Metzinger’s later cubist works: they already allow us to sense his affinity for construction and a structured pictorial space. Aided by his artistic dialogue with Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris, Metzinger’s formal idiom would become increasingly geometric in the years that followed, culminating in analytical cubism in 1909. In 1912 his important text “Du Cubisme”, which he wrote together with Albert Gleizes, was published. Our delicate landscape strikingly demonstrates Metzinger’s extraordinary talent for bringing the luminous timbre of the landscape into the image. The painting’s exceptional quality is underscored not least by its inclusion at major museum exhibitions in Cologne and Rotterdam.