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Description: MAN RAY
1890-1976
LEDA AND THE SWAN

LEDA AND THE SWAN

measurements
30 1/8 by 40 1/8 in.

alternate measurements
76.5 by 102 cm

Signed and dated Man Ray 1941 (lower left)

Oil on canvas

This work will be included in the Catalogue of the Paintings of Man Ray being prepared by Andrew Strauss and Timothy Baum.

PROVENANCE

Elsie Ray Siegler, New Jersey City (sister of Man Ray)
Elaine Taswell, Rochester, Minnesota (daughter of the above)

EXHIBITED

Hollywood, Frank Perls Gallery, Man Ray, Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings, Photographic Compositions, 1941, no. 22
Pasadena, Art Institute, Retrospective Exhibition 1913-1944, Paintings, Drawings, Watercolors, Photographs by Man Ray, 1944, no. 31
New York, Julien Levy Gallery, Man Ray, 1945, no. 12
New Haven, Yale University, An Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture by the Directors of the Société Anonyme Since its Foundation 1920-1948, 1948, no. 51
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Man Ray, 1966, no. 51
New York, The New York Cultural Center, Man Ray, Inventor/Painter/Poet, 1974-75, no. 44
New York, André Emmerich Gallery, Man Ray: An Americain Surrealist Vision, 1997, no. 8, illustrated
Milwaukee, Marquette University, The Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art, Man Ray in America, 1989, no. 13, illustrated p. 29; p. 30, illustrated in a photograph (see fig.1)
New York, Francis M. Naumann Fine Art, Man Ray in America, Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture and Photographs, 2001-2002, p. 47, pl. 36, illustrated
Milwaukee, Marquette University, The Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art, 1988-2005 (on long-term loan)

LITERATURE

View, vol. IV, no. I, New York, March 1945, p. 44, illustrated (in a Julien Levy Gallery advertisement)
Arturo Schwarz, Man Ray, The Rigour of Imagination, London, 1977, no. 161, illustrated p. 103
Man Ray Disegni (exhibition catalogue), Museo Regionale di Palazzo Bellomo, Siracusa, 1985, illustrated p. 85
Man Ray Paris~LA (exhibition catalogue), Track 16 Gallery/Robert Berman Gallery, Santa Monica, 1996-97, illustrated p. 61

NOTE

One of the most remarkable paintings made by Man Ray during his eleven year stay in Hollywood from 1940 to 1951 is Leda and the Swan, an image that stylistically draws upon the artist's prior immersion in the Surrealist movement in Paris during the 1920s and 30s. Leda is composed of geometric objects reminiscent of wooden lay figures, that feature prominently in Man Ray's paintings of the late 1930s and early 40s.
As a result of events in his personal life, the subject may have harbored a special significance for Man Ray. According to Greek myth, Zeus transformed himself into a beautiful swan in order to secure an intimate union with Leda (wife of Tynareus, King of Sparta). Shortly before this picture was painted, Man Ray met and fell in love with Juliet Browner, a beautiful young dancer from New York. Subconsciously, he may have felt it necessary to transform himself, or make some serious adjustments to his former lifestyle as an inveterate bachelor if he were to succeed in securing her affections. Man Ray and Juliet married in 1946 and would spend the rest of their lives together.
Countless artists of the Renaissance and Baroque periods to the 20^th Century have depicted the subject of Leda and the swan, and thus, to Americans, it would have been considered a strictly European subject. Paradoxically, as Francis Naumann observed, it is this very quality --its European lineage-- that contributes to establishing the identity of this painting as a uniquely American production. In having selected such a foreign subject, Man Ray imports and lays aesthetic claim to the precedent of European history, just as the bloodline of most Americans (including his own) can be traced to various European nationalities. Such may have been the reason that this picture was selected by the American painter George Biddle as a characteristic example of the Man Ray's work and placed into the background of his Portrait of Man Ray (Fig. 1) painted in 1941 (Philadelphia Museum of Art). Biddle also arranged an unusual "Western" still life on the sofa next to the artist --composed of a cow's skull, a piece of driftwood and a white cloth as if to emphasize the fact that this famous European Surrealist had finally returned to his native soil.

Fig. 1 George Biddle, Portrait of Man Ray, oil on canvas, Philadelphia Museum of Art