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Lot Essay
Léger included as a central element in many of his paintings during the late 1920s and early 1930s a key or a set of keys, actually none other than his own house keys on a ring. The appearance of the key or keys is a marker, a recurring visual signifier that tracks the evolutionary process Léger had initiated in his art and which was already quickly gathering momentum during this important period. The artist was in effect unlocking and opening the door, to pass from one phase to the next in his painting, moving from the high classicism of the mid-1920s to the vital, refreshed, more liberated forms of what he called the "new realism," founded upon his concept of the "the object in space."
In addressing the present painting, it is impossible not to mention the word "key" in another connotation: Nature morte à la clé, painted in 1929, is in fact a key work in coming to an understanding of this momentous change in Léger's art. It is furthermore a striking and stunningly beautiful painting, in every way a state of the art picture that sums up Léger's achievement at the end of the decade of the Twenties. This painting featured in the landmark exhibition of Léger's work at the Kunsthaus Zurich in 1933, to which Christian Zervos dedicated an issue of Cahiers d'Art. Georges Bauquier and the editors of the Léger catalogue raisonné selected Nature morte à la clé to adorn the cover of the volume devoted to years 1929-1931 (see page 13)
Throughout the 1920s Léger had made it his aim to draw attention to the object:
"In painting the strongest restraint had been that of subject matter upon composition, imposed by the Italian Renaissance. This effort toward freedom began with the Impressionists and has continued to express itself until our day... The feeling for the object is already in primitive pictures--in works of the high periods of Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, Roman and Gothic art. The moderns are going to develop it, isolate it, and extract every possible result from it" (Léger, from "The New Realism," in E.F. Fry, ed., Fernand Léger: Functions of Painting, New York, 1973, p. 109).
"The subject in painting has already been destroyed, just as avant-garde film destroyed the story line. I thought that the object, which had been neglected, was the thing to replace the subject" (Léger quoted in J. Cassou and J. Leymarie, Fernand Léger: Drawings and Gouaches, New York, 1973, p. 87).
Léger's still-life paintings of the mid-1920s exalt the individual object--in and of itself, as well as in relation to other objects in the composition--on a truly monumental scale, set within the larger context of the culminating stage of his engagement with classicism, in which he emphasized the values of balance and order in his pictures. These paintings reflect Léger's considered and definitive response to le rappel à l'ordre--"the call to order"--a classicizing trend that had strongly influenced the arts since the end of the First World War (see lot 51; also fig. 1).
Towards the end of the 1920s, however, Léger felt that the discipline of classicism had become more of a stricture than a strength, and that the imposition of order--insofar as he had made it a virtue for its own sake--had begun to encumber him in his efforts to maximize the expression of contrasts in both object and form in his paintings, which had always been and should remain, he believed, the primary impetus in his art. During 1928 he began to divest his work of the classical structure that had underpinned the grand still-life compositions he had painted in recent years, and he discarded those rigid, geometric frames which had enforced "the call to order" in his paintings. He then cut loose the object from its accustomed formal moorings and allowed it to float freely across the canvas, lending his compositions a sense of randomness and spontaneity that was entirely new in his work (Bauquier, no. 712; fig. 2).
"I placed objects in space so that I could take them as a certainty. I felt that I could not place an object on a table with diminishing its value... I selected an object, chucked the table away. I put the object in space, minus perspective. Minus anything to hold it there. I then had to liberate color to an even greater extent" (Léger quoted in P. de Francia, Fernand Léger, New Haven, 1983, p. 111).
As for what Léger calls 'un jeu pas facile,'" Werner Schmalenbach has pointed out, "it includes two different factors: the playful nature of the whole composition and the renunciation of a strong formal constraint" (Fernand Leger, New York, 1976, p. 132).
"Léger's objects have escaped from the domination of the subject," Jean Leymarie has observed, "as they have from the pull of gravity; they invert or reject perspective, loom up and recede in the air, with the power and mystery of pictures in slow motion (Bauquier, no. 643; fig. 3). This decisive change, the abrupt turning from a static, frontal, solemn order to a fluid and playful freedom, corresponds to the painter's internal dialectic" (in J. Cassou and J. Leymarie, Fernand Léger: Drawings and Gouaches, London, 1973, p. 99)
"I dispersed my objects in space, and kept them altogether while at the same time making them radiate out from the surface of the picture. A tricky interplay of harmonies and rhythms made up of background and surface colors, guidelines, distances and oppositions" (Léger quoted in W. Schmalenbach, op. cit., p. 132).
In his essay "The New Realism," based on a lecture he delivered at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, on 4 October 1935, Léger declared:
"Subject matter being done for at last, we are free... This freedom expresses itself ceaselessly in every sense. It is, therefore, possible to assert the following: that color has a reality in itself, a life of its own; that a geometric form has also a reality in itself, independent and plastic.
"In his new phase, compositional freedom becomes unlimited. A total freedom, permitting compositions from the imagination in which creative fantasy can emerge and develop. This object, which was encased in subject matter, becomes free; pure color that could not be asserted independently is going to emerge. It becomes the leading character in the new pictorial works" (Léger quoted in E.F. Fry, ed., op. cit., p. 110).
The all-important key appears in Nature morte à la clé as a vertical black silhouette just right of center in the composition, in between the split forms of a vase at left and a baluster at right. The latter two are monumentalized forms that Léger carried over from the classical still-lifes of previous years. Echoing the cloud shapes that float within the composition, the undulating contour of the baluster would eventually be transformed in subsequent paintings into a human profile, marking the significant change-over in Léger's work from mechanical to organic elements. The large white forms of the vase and baluster provide a flat, background context against which Léger plays off the shifting sense of space generated by the tumbling motion of the free-floating objects; these include two steps of a stairway, leading perhaps to a door; leaves; white, blue-gray and black clouds; and a rippling ribbon-form that suggests a stream or other channel of water. Plant tendrils and dotted lines marking the route of people's steps serve as serpentine, filament-like arabesques that appear to bind together the disparate elements in this composition. The thin black guidelines across the top and around the edges of the composition are all that remain of the heavy framing devices that Léger had employed in the classical still-lifes of the mid-1920s.
There is perhaps a meteorological and seasonal subtext in this painting--rain drops fall from the cloud at upper center, water flows along a gutter drain, leaves emerge from their shoots. During the late 1920s Léger included with increasing frequency in his compositions organic elements and other motifs derived from the natural landscape, which enriched his every expanding vocabulary of contrasts. It should nonetheless be considered--insofar as there is now no subject in a Léger painting--that the overall impression in a composition of this kind is to a large extent coincidental, for the reason that Léger has selected and juxtaposed these objects primarily on the basis of the pictorial effect that they create, by dint of the contrasts they generate with one another and the composition as a whole (Bauquier, no. 560; fig. 4). Léger stated in "The New Realism":
The key appears in Nature morte à la clé as a vertical black silhouette just right of center in the composition, in between the split forms of a vase at left and a baluster at right. The latter two are elements Léger carried over from the classical still-lifes of previous years, and here provide a flat, background context against which Léger plays off the shifting sense of space generated by the tumbling motion of the free-floating objects, which include two steps of a stairway, leading perhaps to a door; leaves; white, gray and black clouds; and a rippling ribbon-form that suggests a stream or other channel of water. Plant tendrils and dotted lines marking the route of people's steps serve as serpentine, filament-like arabesques that appear to bind together the disparate elements in this composition.
There is perhaps a meteorological subtext in this painting--rain drops fall from the cloud at upper center, water flows along a gutter drain, leaves fall from the trees. During the late 1920s Léger included with increasing frequency in his compositions organic elements and other motifs derived from the natural landscape, which enriched his every expanding vocabulary of contrasts. It should nonetheless be considered that the context created in a Léger painting of this kind is to a large extent coincidental, for the reason that Léger has selected and juxtaposed these objects primarily on the basis of the pictorial effect that they create, by dint of the contrasts they generate with one another and the composition as a whole (Bauquier, no. 560; fig. 4). Léger stated in "The New Realism":
"One understands that everything is of equal interest, that the human face or the human body [Bauquier, no. 567; fig. 5] is of no weightier plastic interest than a tree, a plant, or a pile of rope. It is enough to compose a picture with these objects, being careful to choose those that may best create a composition... Is it an abstract picture? No, it is a representational picture. What we call an abstract picture does not exist. There is neither an abstract picture nor a concrete one. There is a beautiful picture and a bad picture. There is the picture that moves you and the one that leaves you indifferent" (ibid., p. 111).
From the very beginning of Léger's career as a modernist, the desire to generate pictorial contrasts ruled his thinking, first in the contrasts of line, form and color, and now as the various aspects in the appearance of everyday things. The classic expression of this phenomenon in Léger's work during this time may be found his painting La Joconde aux clés, 1930 (Bauquier, no. 712; fig. 6). The artist liked to tell the story behind this picture:
"One day I painted a bunch of keys on a canvas. They were my own keys. I had no idea what I was going to place next to them. I needed something absolutely different from the keys. When I finished working I went out. I had hardly gone a few steps when what did I see in a shop window? A postcard of the Mona Lisa! I understood at once. What could provide a greater contrast to the keys? She was what I needed. And that's how the Mona Lisa came into the picture. And following this I added a tin of sardines. It all added up to the sharpest possible contrast. I have kept this picture and won't sell it I achieved the most risky painting in this way from the point of view of contrasted objects. For as far as I am concerned the Mona Lisa is an object like any other. In terms of quality I believe that I have achieved what I set out to do, in spite of the enormous difficulties involved." (Léger quoted in P. de Francia, op. cit., p. 111)
The unexpected combinations of imagery in Léger's paintings of this period is reminiscent of the statement that Comte de Lautréamont (the pen-name of Isidore Ducasse, 1846-1870) famously made in his hallucinatory and visionary book Maldoror: "As beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella!" The Surrealists made this their mantra, and there is the temptation to view Léger's interest in such unexpected and inexplicable contrasts during this period as stemming in part from the impact of the Surrealism on the art scene at that time. Peter de Francia has delved into this issue:
"Léger's use of certain pictorial devices associated with Surrealism, such as free-floating objects suspended in apparently limitless space, has been commented on by many critics. Léger repudiated any surreal intent concerning La Joconde aux clés or other painting of the period. There are connections, however, notably in the taking of common objects out of conventional contexts and the emphasis of the illogicality of their new-found relationships. But the use Léger made of this device differs completely from that adopted by Surrealist painters like Dalí or Tanguy. This is primarily due to the fact that incongruity or illogicality in Léger's work is never intended as a violation of the subconscious. There is no assault on the memory of the spectator. The imaginary and the real are not ambivalent, and subject matter in Léger's case is never invested with transcendental meaning" (op. cit., p. 114).
Jean Leymarie, moreover, has reminded us that "It is easy but pointless to delve into the Freudian implications of such combinations; Léger's reactions were stimulated only by the physical reality of objects, and he was influenced only by plastic requirements, by the laws of rhythm and contrast in his self-ordained world" (op cit., p. 101).
Léger relished the contention of opposing notions, the play of contrasts of every kind--in them he felt the very essence of modernity. Yet his dialectical approach to life and art was neither fitful nor convulsive, but took the form of an evolutionary process that was rather more seasonal in its advance, like the progression of seasons, lending his career a surprisingly steady profile for a creative mind that thrived so mightily on the appearance of contrasts and oppositions. He invited change in his art and was always closely attuned to his environment so that he might readily identify and engage with the most interesting ideas that would help bring this about. De Francia has stated, "Each series of paintings by Léger affirms a process of consolidation while at the same time announcing a fresh point of departure" (op. cit., p. 115). While there is no definable subject in Nature morte à la clé, this magnificent painting, so mysterious and haunting, yet at the same time in its elements so utterly matter-of-fact, does tell of an awakening to a process by which the world is revealed to the artist, through the contemplation of one object at a time, one after another. This is the door to which Léger holds up his key, inviting us to step up to the threshold, to pass through, and onward to the next.
Artist photo: Fernand Léger in his Paris studio, circa 1930. Photograph by Roger-Viollet, Paris.
(fig. 1) Fernand Léger, Nature morte, 1927. Sold, Christie's, New York, 3 November 2010, lot 17.
(fig. 2) Fernand Léger, Nature morte à la pipe sur fond orange, 1928. Private collection.
(fig, 3) Fernand Léger, Composition aux clés et au chapeau de paille, 1929, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Le Havre.
(fig. 4) Fernand Léger, Nature morte, 1928. Tate Gallery, London.
(fig. 5) Fernand Léger, Danseuses aux clés, Étude, 1928. Sold, Christie's, New York, 5 November 2008, lot 56.
(fig. 6) Fernand Léger, La Joconde aux clés, 1930. Musée National Fernand Léger, Biot.
Captions for Covers
Front cover of Cahiers d'Art, Paris, 1933, nos. 3-4, an issue devoted to Léger's exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zurich, with the page illustrating Nature morte à la clé.
Front of the dust jacket for Georges Bauquier, Fernand Léger, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, Maeght Éditeur, Paris. 1995.
In addressing the present painting, it is impossible not to mention the word "key" in another connotation: Nature morte à la clé, painted in 1929, is in fact a key work in coming to an understanding of this momentous change in Léger's art. It is furthermore a striking and stunningly beautiful painting, in every way a state of the art picture that sums up Léger's achievement at the end of the decade of the Twenties. This painting featured in the landmark exhibition of Léger's work at the Kunsthaus Zurich in 1933, to which Christian Zervos dedicated an issue of Cahiers d'Art. Georges Bauquier and the editors of the Léger catalogue raisonné selected Nature morte à la clé to adorn the cover of the volume devoted to years 1929-1931 (see page 13)
Throughout the 1920s Léger had made it his aim to draw attention to the object:
"In painting the strongest restraint had been that of subject matter upon composition, imposed by the Italian Renaissance. This effort toward freedom began with the Impressionists and has continued to express itself until our day... The feeling for the object is already in primitive pictures--in works of the high periods of Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, Roman and Gothic art. The moderns are going to develop it, isolate it, and extract every possible result from it" (Léger, from "The New Realism," in E.F. Fry, ed., Fernand Léger: Functions of Painting, New York, 1973, p. 109).
"The subject in painting has already been destroyed, just as avant-garde film destroyed the story line. I thought that the object, which had been neglected, was the thing to replace the subject" (Léger quoted in J. Cassou and J. Leymarie, Fernand Léger: Drawings and Gouaches, New York, 1973, p. 87).
Léger's still-life paintings of the mid-1920s exalt the individual object--in and of itself, as well as in relation to other objects in the composition--on a truly monumental scale, set within the larger context of the culminating stage of his engagement with classicism, in which he emphasized the values of balance and order in his pictures. These paintings reflect Léger's considered and definitive response to le rappel à l'ordre--"the call to order"--a classicizing trend that had strongly influenced the arts since the end of the First World War (see lot 51; also fig. 1).
Towards the end of the 1920s, however, Léger felt that the discipline of classicism had become more of a stricture than a strength, and that the imposition of order--insofar as he had made it a virtue for its own sake--had begun to encumber him in his efforts to maximize the expression of contrasts in both object and form in his paintings, which had always been and should remain, he believed, the primary impetus in his art. During 1928 he began to divest his work of the classical structure that had underpinned the grand still-life compositions he had painted in recent years, and he discarded those rigid, geometric frames which had enforced "the call to order" in his paintings. He then cut loose the object from its accustomed formal moorings and allowed it to float freely across the canvas, lending his compositions a sense of randomness and spontaneity that was entirely new in his work (Bauquier, no. 712; fig. 2).
"I placed objects in space so that I could take them as a certainty. I felt that I could not place an object on a table with diminishing its value... I selected an object, chucked the table away. I put the object in space, minus perspective. Minus anything to hold it there. I then had to liberate color to an even greater extent" (Léger quoted in P. de Francia, Fernand Léger, New Haven, 1983, p. 111).
As for what Léger calls 'un jeu pas facile,'" Werner Schmalenbach has pointed out, "it includes two different factors: the playful nature of the whole composition and the renunciation of a strong formal constraint" (Fernand Leger, New York, 1976, p. 132).
"Léger's objects have escaped from the domination of the subject," Jean Leymarie has observed, "as they have from the pull of gravity; they invert or reject perspective, loom up and recede in the air, with the power and mystery of pictures in slow motion (Bauquier, no. 643; fig. 3). This decisive change, the abrupt turning from a static, frontal, solemn order to a fluid and playful freedom, corresponds to the painter's internal dialectic" (in J. Cassou and J. Leymarie, Fernand Léger: Drawings and Gouaches, London, 1973, p. 99)
"I dispersed my objects in space, and kept them altogether while at the same time making them radiate out from the surface of the picture. A tricky interplay of harmonies and rhythms made up of background and surface colors, guidelines, distances and oppositions" (Léger quoted in W. Schmalenbach, op. cit., p. 132).
In his essay "The New Realism," based on a lecture he delivered at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, on 4 October 1935, Léger declared:
"Subject matter being done for at last, we are free... This freedom expresses itself ceaselessly in every sense. It is, therefore, possible to assert the following: that color has a reality in itself, a life of its own; that a geometric form has also a reality in itself, independent and plastic.
"In his new phase, compositional freedom becomes unlimited. A total freedom, permitting compositions from the imagination in which creative fantasy can emerge and develop. This object, which was encased in subject matter, becomes free; pure color that could not be asserted independently is going to emerge. It becomes the leading character in the new pictorial works" (Léger quoted in E.F. Fry, ed., op. cit., p. 110).
The all-important key appears in Nature morte à la clé as a vertical black silhouette just right of center in the composition, in between the split forms of a vase at left and a baluster at right. The latter two are monumentalized forms that Léger carried over from the classical still-lifes of previous years. Echoing the cloud shapes that float within the composition, the undulating contour of the baluster would eventually be transformed in subsequent paintings into a human profile, marking the significant change-over in Léger's work from mechanical to organic elements. The large white forms of the vase and baluster provide a flat, background context against which Léger plays off the shifting sense of space generated by the tumbling motion of the free-floating objects; these include two steps of a stairway, leading perhaps to a door; leaves; white, blue-gray and black clouds; and a rippling ribbon-form that suggests a stream or other channel of water. Plant tendrils and dotted lines marking the route of people's steps serve as serpentine, filament-like arabesques that appear to bind together the disparate elements in this composition. The thin black guidelines across the top and around the edges of the composition are all that remain of the heavy framing devices that Léger had employed in the classical still-lifes of the mid-1920s.
There is perhaps a meteorological and seasonal subtext in this painting--rain drops fall from the cloud at upper center, water flows along a gutter drain, leaves emerge from their shoots. During the late 1920s Léger included with increasing frequency in his compositions organic elements and other motifs derived from the natural landscape, which enriched his every expanding vocabulary of contrasts. It should nonetheless be considered--insofar as there is now no subject in a Léger painting--that the overall impression in a composition of this kind is to a large extent coincidental, for the reason that Léger has selected and juxtaposed these objects primarily on the basis of the pictorial effect that they create, by dint of the contrasts they generate with one another and the composition as a whole (Bauquier, no. 560; fig. 4). Léger stated in "The New Realism":
The key appears in Nature morte à la clé as a vertical black silhouette just right of center in the composition, in between the split forms of a vase at left and a baluster at right. The latter two are elements Léger carried over from the classical still-lifes of previous years, and here provide a flat, background context against which Léger plays off the shifting sense of space generated by the tumbling motion of the free-floating objects, which include two steps of a stairway, leading perhaps to a door; leaves; white, gray and black clouds; and a rippling ribbon-form that suggests a stream or other channel of water. Plant tendrils and dotted lines marking the route of people's steps serve as serpentine, filament-like arabesques that appear to bind together the disparate elements in this composition.
There is perhaps a meteorological subtext in this painting--rain drops fall from the cloud at upper center, water flows along a gutter drain, leaves fall from the trees. During the late 1920s Léger included with increasing frequency in his compositions organic elements and other motifs derived from the natural landscape, which enriched his every expanding vocabulary of contrasts. It should nonetheless be considered that the context created in a Léger painting of this kind is to a large extent coincidental, for the reason that Léger has selected and juxtaposed these objects primarily on the basis of the pictorial effect that they create, by dint of the contrasts they generate with one another and the composition as a whole (Bauquier, no. 560; fig. 4). Léger stated in "The New Realism":
"One understands that everything is of equal interest, that the human face or the human body [Bauquier, no. 567; fig. 5] is of no weightier plastic interest than a tree, a plant, or a pile of rope. It is enough to compose a picture with these objects, being careful to choose those that may best create a composition... Is it an abstract picture? No, it is a representational picture. What we call an abstract picture does not exist. There is neither an abstract picture nor a concrete one. There is a beautiful picture and a bad picture. There is the picture that moves you and the one that leaves you indifferent" (ibid., p. 111).
From the very beginning of Léger's career as a modernist, the desire to generate pictorial contrasts ruled his thinking, first in the contrasts of line, form and color, and now as the various aspects in the appearance of everyday things. The classic expression of this phenomenon in Léger's work during this time may be found his painting La Joconde aux clés, 1930 (Bauquier, no. 712; fig. 6). The artist liked to tell the story behind this picture:
"One day I painted a bunch of keys on a canvas. They were my own keys. I had no idea what I was going to place next to them. I needed something absolutely different from the keys. When I finished working I went out. I had hardly gone a few steps when what did I see in a shop window? A postcard of the Mona Lisa! I understood at once. What could provide a greater contrast to the keys? She was what I needed. And that's how the Mona Lisa came into the picture. And following this I added a tin of sardines. It all added up to the sharpest possible contrast. I have kept this picture and won't sell it I achieved the most risky painting in this way from the point of view of contrasted objects. For as far as I am concerned the Mona Lisa is an object like any other. In terms of quality I believe that I have achieved what I set out to do, in spite of the enormous difficulties involved." (Léger quoted in P. de Francia, op. cit., p. 111)
The unexpected combinations of imagery in Léger's paintings of this period is reminiscent of the statement that Comte de Lautréamont (the pen-name of Isidore Ducasse, 1846-1870) famously made in his hallucinatory and visionary book Maldoror: "As beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella!" The Surrealists made this their mantra, and there is the temptation to view Léger's interest in such unexpected and inexplicable contrasts during this period as stemming in part from the impact of the Surrealism on the art scene at that time. Peter de Francia has delved into this issue:
"Léger's use of certain pictorial devices associated with Surrealism, such as free-floating objects suspended in apparently limitless space, has been commented on by many critics. Léger repudiated any surreal intent concerning La Joconde aux clés or other painting of the period. There are connections, however, notably in the taking of common objects out of conventional contexts and the emphasis of the illogicality of their new-found relationships. But the use Léger made of this device differs completely from that adopted by Surrealist painters like Dalí or Tanguy. This is primarily due to the fact that incongruity or illogicality in Léger's work is never intended as a violation of the subconscious. There is no assault on the memory of the spectator. The imaginary and the real are not ambivalent, and subject matter in Léger's case is never invested with transcendental meaning" (op. cit., p. 114).
Jean Leymarie, moreover, has reminded us that "It is easy but pointless to delve into the Freudian implications of such combinations; Léger's reactions were stimulated only by the physical reality of objects, and he was influenced only by plastic requirements, by the laws of rhythm and contrast in his self-ordained world" (op cit., p. 101).
Léger relished the contention of opposing notions, the play of contrasts of every kind--in them he felt the very essence of modernity. Yet his dialectical approach to life and art was neither fitful nor convulsive, but took the form of an evolutionary process that was rather more seasonal in its advance, like the progression of seasons, lending his career a surprisingly steady profile for a creative mind that thrived so mightily on the appearance of contrasts and oppositions. He invited change in his art and was always closely attuned to his environment so that he might readily identify and engage with the most interesting ideas that would help bring this about. De Francia has stated, "Each series of paintings by Léger affirms a process of consolidation while at the same time announcing a fresh point of departure" (op. cit., p. 115). While there is no definable subject in Nature morte à la clé, this magnificent painting, so mysterious and haunting, yet at the same time in its elements so utterly matter-of-fact, does tell of an awakening to a process by which the world is revealed to the artist, through the contemplation of one object at a time, one after another. This is the door to which Léger holds up his key, inviting us to step up to the threshold, to pass through, and onward to the next.
Artist photo: Fernand Léger in his Paris studio, circa 1930. Photograph by Roger-Viollet, Paris.
(fig. 1) Fernand Léger, Nature morte, 1927. Sold, Christie's, New York, 3 November 2010, lot 17.
(fig. 2) Fernand Léger, Nature morte à la pipe sur fond orange, 1928. Private collection.
(fig, 3) Fernand Léger, Composition aux clés et au chapeau de paille, 1929, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Le Havre.
(fig. 4) Fernand Léger, Nature morte, 1928. Tate Gallery, London.
(fig. 5) Fernand Léger, Danseuses aux clés, Étude, 1928. Sold, Christie's, New York, 5 November 2008, lot 56.
(fig. 6) Fernand Léger, La Joconde aux clés, 1930. Musée National Fernand Léger, Biot.
Captions for Covers
Front cover of Cahiers d'Art, Paris, 1933, nos. 3-4, an issue devoted to Léger's exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zurich, with the page illustrating Nature morte à la clé.
Front of the dust jacket for Georges Bauquier, Fernand Léger, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, Maeght Éditeur, Paris. 1995.