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Lot Essay
Painted in 1951, Les femmes au perroquet looks back to Léger’s pre-war masterwork, Composition aux deux perroquets, from 1935-1939 (Bauquier, no. 881; fig. 1). In that monumental, mural-size painting, Léger created the paradigm for the pictorial conception that would take precedence in his art for the remainder of his career, and see fruition in his great post-war compositions. Visual contrasts in terms of imagery, forms and color would henceforth interact on a huge scale. His figure subjects would be active and life-affirming, and participate in a new "outdoors" reality. Léger wrote to a friend in 1939: "We have all achieved a reality, an indoor reality—but there is perhaps another one possible, more outdoors...The new thing in this type of big picture is an intensity ten times greater than its predecessors. We can get this intensity by the application of contrasts—pure tones and groupings of form...That is the solution for the big picture" (quoted in C. Lanchner, Fernand Léger, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1998, p. 145).
The two parrots are among the smallest of the elements in the 1935-1939 composition—in fact, Léger added them at the last minute to serve as color accents and points of visual focus. Their unexpected presence, however, had the effect of dominating the picture, to which they gave its title. Léger used the parrot motif again in two large compositions he painted following his arrival in New York: La femme au perroquet, 1941 (Bauquier, no. 1087) and Les deux femmes à l’oiseau, 1942 (Bauquier, no. 1088; fig. 2). From the latter, Léger borrowed the poses of the two women and the parrot, as well as the tree-trunk and leaf forms, and reprised them in the present work. He placed them in an extensive and layered horizontal landscape format, in which he extended the right-hand side to include a third girl, who sits on a fence, holding an aster-like flower.
This work is related to a large ceramic relief, also titled Les femmes au perroquet, which Léger executed in 1952. The ceramic relief Les femmes au perroquet was Léger's first large-scale work in this medium. In works of this kind, Léger ultimately fulfilled his aspirations for "the big picture." The symbol of the parrot, which may have possessed some private meaning for the artist, remained a constant motif in this search. Léger wrote that his polychrome sculpture "marks a very definite evolution toward the goal of integration with architecture. This has been a preoccupation with me from the beginning, but I commenced gradually, using my easel painting as a point of departure. Now a mural art can be defined, with all its possibilities; a static or dynamic role; its uses for either the exterior or interior of buildings" (quoted in P. de Francia, Fernand Léger, New Haven, 1983, p. 246).
The two parrots are among the smallest of the elements in the 1935-1939 composition—in fact, Léger added them at the last minute to serve as color accents and points of visual focus. Their unexpected presence, however, had the effect of dominating the picture, to which they gave its title. Léger used the parrot motif again in two large compositions he painted following his arrival in New York: La femme au perroquet, 1941 (Bauquier, no. 1087) and Les deux femmes à l’oiseau, 1942 (Bauquier, no. 1088; fig. 2). From the latter, Léger borrowed the poses of the two women and the parrot, as well as the tree-trunk and leaf forms, and reprised them in the present work. He placed them in an extensive and layered horizontal landscape format, in which he extended the right-hand side to include a third girl, who sits on a fence, holding an aster-like flower.
This work is related to a large ceramic relief, also titled Les femmes au perroquet, which Léger executed in 1952. The ceramic relief Les femmes au perroquet was Léger's first large-scale work in this medium. In works of this kind, Léger ultimately fulfilled his aspirations for "the big picture." The symbol of the parrot, which may have possessed some private meaning for the artist, remained a constant motif in this search. Léger wrote that his polychrome sculpture "marks a very definite evolution toward the goal of integration with architecture. This has been a preoccupation with me from the beginning, but I commenced gradually, using my easel painting as a point of departure. Now a mural art can be defined, with all its possibilities; a static or dynamic role; its uses for either the exterior or interior of buildings" (quoted in P. de Francia, Fernand Léger, New Haven, 1983, p. 246).