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Description: Painted in 1922. Signed with the initials F.L. and dated 22 (lower right) Oil on board laid down on cradled panel

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Dimensions: measurements 14 3/4 by 10 5/8 in. alternate measurements 37.5 by 27 cm

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Provenance: Amédée Ozenfant, Paris and New York (acquired from the artist in 1922)Stanley Barbee, Beverly HillsBerggruen & Cie., ParisLarry Aldrich, New York (sold: Parke-Bernet, New York, October 30, 1963, lot 17)Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Weisman, Beverly Hills (acquired at the above sale and sold: Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, October 14, 1965, lot 88)Perls Galleries, New YorkHarold Diamond, New YorkPrivate Collection, New York (acquired from the above)Acquired from the above in 2001

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Exhibited:

Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Art; Atlanta Art Association Galleries; Albany Institute of History and Art, Loan Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture from the Larry Aldrich Collection , 1959-60, no. 25

Tulsa, Dallas and Los Angeles, American Federation of the Arts, The Aldrich Collection , 1960-62, no. 27

Berlin, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Fernand Léger , 1981, no. 35

Roslyn Harbor, Nassau County Museum of Art, Long Island Collects: The Figure and the Landscape, 1870s-1980 , 1990, no. 48 (as dating from 1912-22)

Roslyn Harbor, Nassau County Museum of Art, Painters and Poets , 1997 (as dating from 1912-22)

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Published: Arts Magazine, New York, January 1959, illustrated p. 38Georges Bauquier, Fernand Léger, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, 1920-1924, Paris, 1992, no. 339, illustrated p. 247

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Notes: PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF TONY RANDALL
Released from the army in early 1918, Léger returned to painting with renewed energy and a new direction. He wrote to Léonce Rosenberg, "As soon as I was freed, I started to profit from those difficult years: I've reached a decision, and I'm modeling in pure local color and on a large scale without making any concessions" (quoted in Fernand Léger, 1911-1924, The Rhythm of Modern Life, New York, 1994, p. 68). Léger's experience in the war brought him face to face with a world being transformed through technology, weaponry and manufactured goods. His aims in painting upon his return thus moved away from the abstract, geometric forms and primary colors that dominated his paintings in the years before the war, toward renewed attention to the objects of the modern world. The present painting shows the artist's use of the traditional subject of the still life transformed by the fragmentation of the objects and space. Léger's concentration on primary color avoids the transitions of light and shadows that indicate volume and spatial relationships, emphasizing the layered, two-dimensional character of the composition. Léger's new conception of his painted surface involved the ability to depict the fragmented immediacy of objects; the frenetic, simultaneity of modern life.