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Dimensions: 36 by 24 in.
(91.4 by 60.9 cm)
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Provenance: PROPERTY FROM A SOUTHWESTERN PRIVATE COLLECTION
Linda R. Miller
Mr. and Mrs. Aaron W. Davis (Helen Miller Obstler, her daughter), New York
Natalie and Jerome Spingarn (her daughter), Washington, D.C.
By decent in the family, Atlanta, Georgia
Gerald Peters Gallery, New York
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Exhibited: New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Pioneers of Modern Art in America, April-May 1946, no. 59
San Francisco, California, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, June 1949 (on loan in Memory of Linda Miller)
Atlanta, Georgia, The High Museum of Art, Buffalo, New York, Albright-Knox Art Gallery; Brooklyn, New York, The Brooklyn Museum; Los Angeles, California, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Max Weber: The Cubist Decade, 1910-1920, December 1991-April 1993, no. 35, p. 101
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Literature: American Artists Group, Max Weber, New York, 1945, illustrated
Alfred Werner, Max Weber, New York, 1975, illustrated pl. 51
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Notes: After spending three years in France studying the works of Cezanne, Picasso, Braque and Matisse, Max Weber returned to New York in 1909 "more informed about French art and aethestics than anyone else in America" (Barbara Haskell, The American Century: Art & Culture 1900-1950, New York, 1999, p. 95). This proximity to the French masters led Weber to develop his own cubist style, and to paint pictures inspired by the vibrancy and newness of 20th century America, particularly New York.
In March of 1910, Weber's paintings were included in the landmark exhibition Younger American Painters, which also featured the works of Arthur B. Carles, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Alfred Maurer, John Marin and Edward Steichen, among others. Organized by Alfred Stieglitz at his 291 gallery, this exhibition revealed to the public for the first time the revolutionary nature of these American modernist painters. Percy North writes, "Weber's inclusion in Younger American Painters established him as a renegade artist with an unusually innovative vision. When Weber's work did not appear at the Independents exhibition organized by the realists in March of 1910, Arthur Hoeber wrote: 'They are independent enough but we miss the name Max Weber, even more independent than any of the foregoing, and we wonder why he is left out of the group. Perhaps he would make the rest look conventional. We opine he would. At any rate no true Independent show would be complete without him...'"(Max Weber: The Cubist Decade 1910-1920, 1991, Atlanta, Georgia, p. 22).
By 1913 Weber was fully immersed in New York life, experiencing the lively cafes, vaudeville theatres and newly released moving pictures, which animated the reinvigorated artistic scene in the city with excitement. This same year, the year of the Armory Show, Weber executed Imaginary Portrait of a Woman. P. North observes, "Two other paintings of 1913 make oblique references to the experience of the cinema. Weber's reverie of his fantasy female from the cinema, revealed in his poem 'I Wonder,' resulted in his painting Imaginary Portrait of a Woman [Imaginative Portrait of a Woman], 1913. Although the subject does not appear to be placed in the theatre, the green curtain at the left side of the canvas suggests a stage-like setting. The portrait allowed the artist to bring his dream girl to life in the manner of the mythical Pygmalion" (Max Weber: The Cubist Decade 1910-1920, p. 29).
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