Jacques Lipchitz

Marlborough Gallery, London
Marwan Hoss Galerie, Paris
Acquired from the above in the late 1980s

Alan G. Wilkinson, The Sculpture of Jacques Lipchitz, A Catalogue Raisonné, The Paris Years, 1910-1940, vol. I, London, 1996, no. 104, illustrated p. 54

This full-length sculpture of a seated harlequin playing a clarinet was conceived in 1919, ten years after Lipchitz's arrival in Paris from Vilna in 1909. He received a traditional training at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian, but early in his career he displayed an interest in a wide range of sculptural styles ranging from classical to tribal. During his early years in Paris, Lipchitz met many of the leading figures of the Parisian avant-garde who introduced him to new artistic interpretations, including the techniques of Cubism. 

By 1919, when he executed the stone version of Seated Man with Clarinet, Lipchitz had developed an attuned sense of spatial composition influenced largely by his study of the Cubist works of Picasso, Braque and Gris. The artist was now able to translate effectively his two-dimensional conceptions into a three-dimensional form. In the series of standing figures with musical instruments, Lipchitz utilized themes from the Commedia dell'arte that had become common currency in the work of Picasso, Gris and many of their contemporaries. He referred to this interest in his autobiography: "One of the first sculptures made in 1919 was the Arlequin à l'accordéon. It reflects my interest in eighteenth century paintings, particularly that of Watteau... The Pierrots and Harlequins were part of our general vocabulary, characters taken from the Commedia dell'arte, particularly popular in the eighteenth century. We may have been attracted to them originally because of their gay traditional costumes, involving many different colored areas" (Jacques Lipchitz, My Life in Sculpture, New York, 1972, p. 58).