Lot 122: Roger de la Fresnaye (1885-1925)

Etude pour La conquête de l'air
signed 'R de la Fresnaye' (lower right)
pen and black ink on paper
12 5/8 x 10 1/8 in. (32.1 x 25.7 cm.)
Drawn in 1913

The Art Institute of Chicago, Graphic Modernism, Selections from the Francey and Dr. Marin L. Gecht Collection, November 2003-January 2004, p. 77, no. 64 (illustrated in color).

André Lefevre, Paris.
B.C. Holland, Inc., Chicago.
Acquired from the above by the present owner, 1994.

De la Fresnaye executed this drawing as a study for the first version of La conquête de l'air, painted in 1913 (Seligman, no. 135; private collection). The scene recounts the artist's conversations about aeronautics with his brother Henri, who was the director of the Nieuport airplane factory in Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris. The third figure at right was eliminated from the second version of this subject (Seligman, no. 136; private collection) and the version définitif, also painted in 1913 (Seligman, no. 137; The Museum of Modern Art, New York).