Max Weber

Estate of the artist

Mrs. Frances Weber (by descent from the above)

Bernard Danenberg Galleries, New York

Acquired from the above by the present owner

American Artists Group, Max Weber, New York, 1945, n.n., illustrated

Alfred Werner, Max Weber, New York, 1975, no. 47, illustrated

We wish to thank scholar Percy North for providing the following essay:

Laborer's Departure is an outstanding example from a group of works Max Weber produced in 1911 and 1912 after a formative sojourn to Europe from 1905 to 1909. These works, including The Geranium (1911) in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, embody the modernist strategies Weber acquired during his time abroad. Weber's study with Henri Matisse, visits to Pablo Picasso, and close friendship with Henri (le Douanier) Rousseau stimulated him to adopt a personal modernist idiom evident in Laborer's Departure. The painting shares the flattened forms, quirky anatomical construction and enigmatic narrative characteristic of Rousseau's figures along with Weber's early adoption of cubist facial features. Weber was one of the earliest of the American artists to develop a modern aesthetic and introduce it in America in works such at Laborer's Departure, which demonstrates his early adoption of cubist techniques. Weber was America's first cubist painter, and Laborer's Departure is one of his earliest works to show his adoption of cubist forms. It is also one of his earliest paintings to address the theme of human labor, which would become a significant theme in his work during the 1930s. The whimsical dog is an unusual lighthearted addition in Weber's work.

The painting has been in the same distinguished New York collection since 1970, prior to which it was in the collection of the artist and his wife.