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Lot Essay
Richard Riss has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
The present lot is an important large scale study, not seen in public for 60 years, for one of Delaunay’s most iconic and rarest depictions of modern city life in Paris, the Manège de cochons.
In 1906 Delaunay painted his ‘premiere version de la peinture future’ (Delaunay, biographical notes, Fonds Delaunay, quoted in M. Drutt, ‘Simultaneous Expressions: Robert Delaunay’s Early Years’, exh. cat., Visions of Paris, Robert Delaunay’s Series, New York, 1997, p. 18). This dynamic composition of a carousel at a fairground was revisited again in 1913 and 1922, and the present lot, although difficult to date precisely, is closest in composition to the final 1922 version, now in the collection of the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou in Paris (no. AM 3384 P). The 1913 oil is now lost, and a fragment of the 1906 version was only found in recent years, on the reverse of a later oil by Delaunay, La fenêtre sur la ville no. 3, of 1911-12, in the collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (no. 47.878.2).
Although the complete 1906 work is lost, cut down into fragments by the artist after its rejection from the 1906 Salon D’Automne, Delaunay described it as: ‘Electric prism; dissonances and concordances of colours; an orchestrated movement striving for a great flash; inspired by a vision of a popular fair, striving for the sort of violent rhythm that African music achieves instinctively; cold and warm colours dissect each other, redissect each other violently, harmonics in comparison with traditional academic harmony.’ (R. Delaunay, ‘Comments on the Backs of Photographs’, 1938-1939, in A. A. Cohen, The Delaunays, Appolinaire, and Cendrars: Critiques 1971-1972, New York, 1972, p.27).
The present lot is an important large scale study, not seen in public for 60 years, for one of Delaunay’s most iconic and rarest depictions of modern city life in Paris, the Manège de cochons.
In 1906 Delaunay painted his ‘premiere version de la peinture future’ (Delaunay, biographical notes, Fonds Delaunay, quoted in M. Drutt, ‘Simultaneous Expressions: Robert Delaunay’s Early Years’, exh. cat., Visions of Paris, Robert Delaunay’s Series, New York, 1997, p. 18). This dynamic composition of a carousel at a fairground was revisited again in 1913 and 1922, and the present lot, although difficult to date precisely, is closest in composition to the final 1922 version, now in the collection of the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou in Paris (no. AM 3384 P). The 1913 oil is now lost, and a fragment of the 1906 version was only found in recent years, on the reverse of a later oil by Delaunay, La fenêtre sur la ville no. 3, of 1911-12, in the collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (no. 47.878.2).
Although the complete 1906 work is lost, cut down into fragments by the artist after its rejection from the 1906 Salon D’Automne, Delaunay described it as: ‘Electric prism; dissonances and concordances of colours; an orchestrated movement striving for a great flash; inspired by a vision of a popular fair, striving for the sort of violent rhythm that African music achieves instinctively; cold and warm colours dissect each other, redissect each other violently, harmonics in comparison with traditional academic harmony.’ (R. Delaunay, ‘Comments on the Backs of Photographs’, 1938-1939, in A. A. Cohen, The Delaunays, Appolinaire, and Cendrars: Critiques 1971-1972, New York, 1972, p.27).