Fernand Léger

Dr. Gottlieb F. Reber, Lausanne (commissioned from the artist and until at least 1952)

Henry Ittleson Jr., New York

The Museum of Modern Art, New York (acquired as a gift from the above on June 15, 1964 and deaccessioned on October 10, 1979)

E.J. van Wisseling & Co., Amsterdam

Perls Galleries, New York (sold: Sotheby's, New York, May 9, 1995, lot 89)

James Annenberg Levee, Florida (acquired at the above sale and sold: Christie's, New York, May 13, 1999, lot 501)

Private Collection (acquired at the above sale and sold: Christie's, London, June 23, 2009, lot 30)

Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

Basel, Kunstmuseum, 1945, no. 7/8

Bern, Kunsthalle, Fernand Léger, 1952, no. 57 (titled Composition 3)

Dorothy Koskinski, "G.F. Reber: Collector of Cubism," in The Burlington Magazine, London, August 1991, discussed p. 522

Georges Bauquier, Fernand Léger, catalogue raisonné, 1929-1931, vol. IV, Paris, 1995, no. 729, illustrated p. 209

Excellent condition. Original canvas. Under ultra-violet light, there is some retouching along the extreme framing edge at the middle-left edge, but otherwise the work appears to be untouched.
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Léger's monumental still-life exemplifies the powerful influence of Surrealism on the artist's aesthetic around 1930.  Although the artist never aligned himself formally with this group of painters, Léger, ever at the forefront of the avant-garde, was not immune to the appeal of the biomorphic imagery that pervaded the pictures of Miró and Dalí during these years.  The present composition is a fine example of how Léger incorporated the linear flourishes and amoeboid forms of Surrealist iconography into his Purist aesthetic practices.

As its title suggests, Nature morte (Composition pour une salle à manger) was one of three large pictures on the theme of music and gastronomy commissioned for the dining room of Dr. Gottlieb Friedrich Reber (1880-1959), a major collector of Cubist pictures during the 1920s and 1930s and Léger's longstanding patron.  Reber had made his fortune as an industrialist during the early 20th century, and came into prominence as an art collector with his acquisitions of important works by Cézanne.  After World War I, Reber shifted his attention towards Cubism, the stylistic inheritor of Cézanne's aesthetic, and amassed a large collection of paintings by Picasso, Braque, Gris and Léger, mostly through the dealers Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler and Paul and Leonce Rosenberg.  Because of his mounting financial troubles during the Depression and afterwards, Reber was compelled to sell off his collection after the war, and many of his Cubist pictures were eventually dispersed to museums throughout the world.  The present work hung for over a decade in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.   

The present work is one of three pictures commissioned for Reber's Chateau du Béthusy in Lausanne.  It is believed that the present work is an hommage to "Radio," or "Broadcast Music." Léger's chief concern here is the visual strength of his forms. The dominating elements are all painted in strong, unmodulated colors, delineated in black and silhouetted against the flat red and yellow background. According to Léger, these are the colors that express the reality of the medium of painting. Rather than imitating nature, the artist was interested in exploring the language of painting in its fullest and purest form, thus reducing his vocabulary to the elements of color and form. As a result, Léger's composition defies a sense of gravity and transcends the earth-bound nature of a traditional still-life.

The present canvas was one of Léger's first explorations into the realm of monumental commissions for specific architectural settings.  As the decade progressed, Léger's work focused largely on international interior design projects, and his paintings from this period often incorporated the crisp imagery that he devised for these purposes.  In 1937, he designed stage sets for the Paris Opéra, as well as decorations for the Trade Union Congress at the Vélodrome d'Hiver and the Transport des Forces for the Palais de Découverte in Paris. Léger continued to work in this capacity in 1938, when he was commissioned to decorate the apartment of Nelson Rockefeller in New York. The decorative flair of the present works was a direct precursor to these various design projects that helped establish Léger as an artist of international repute.