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Description: Painted in 1916. Signed and dated R Delaunay 1916 (lower right) Oil on linen

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Dimensions: measurements 51 1/4 by 38 1/4 in. alternate measurements 130 by 97 cm

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Provenance: Galerie Louis Carré, Paris
Private Collection (acquired from the above in 1965)

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Exhibited: Galerie Paul Guillaume, Robert Delaunay, Paris, 1922, no. 24
Berne, Kunsthalle, Ausstellung Robert Delaunay, 1951, no. 33
Marseille, Musée Cantini, Premières étapes de la peinture moderne, 1955, no. 45
Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Première Biennale de Paris: Jeunesse des Maitres, 1959, no. 18, illustrated pl. 26
Zurich, Galerie Charles Lienhard, Exposition de peinture contemporaine, 1962-1963, no. 1155 , illustrated in color

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Published: Léon Degand, Art d'Aujourd'hui, "Robert Delaunay", Paris, 1951, p. 11
Pierre Restany, Cimaise, "Robert Delaunay", Paris, 1957, p. 7
Guy Habasque, Du Cubism à L'Art Abstrait: un Catalogue de l'Oeuvre de Robert Delaunay, Paris, 1957, no. 175, p. 278
Gérald Gassiot-Talabot, Cimaise, "Les Sources du XXème Siècle", 1961, p. 31

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Notes: The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Richard Riss.
PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED PRIVATE COLLECTION
Delaunay spent much of the First World War in Portugal with his wife Sonia, first in Vila do Count, near Oporto and then in Valença do Minho, when they resided until 1918. Robert had a medical condition which prevented him from active duty; this also suited his (and his wife, Sonia's) commitment to pacifism. This was a period of calm for both artists, spent away from Paris, where Delaunay had found such inspiration from the artistic foment of the day, and was at the forefront of the Orphism movement. In Portugal, he continued to paint actively, and undertook new developments, inspired as he was by the simple life in his new surroundings, which he described as 'violent contrasts of colored marks, women's clothing, striking shawls of delicious, metallic greens, watermelons. Forms and colors: women disappearing in mountains of pumpkins, vegetables, enchanting markets' (quoted by P. Francastel in Robert Delaunay, Du cubisme à l'art abstrait, Paris, 1957, p. 127). The Portugaise works were of great importance in that they serve to underline Delaunay's development towards an art in which color and design are on equal footing in the conception of the work as a whole, anticipating his later and purely abstract Rythmes series. The present work closely related in subject and composition to a major painting done in wax at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, in Madrid, which portrays the same figure, wearing her distinctive flowered shawl, who seems bent in concentration, balancing two enormous abstracted pumpkins between her hands. Fig. 1 Robert Delaunay, La grande portugaise, 1916, wax on canvas, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid