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Date: 1891-1953

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Description: Painted in 1913.

signed Kisling and dated 913 (upper right); signed Kisling M and titled on the reverse

oil on canvas

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Dimensions: 97 by 130cm., 38 1/4 by 51 1/8 in.

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Provenance: PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE FRENCH COLLECTION

Luc Simon, Paris
Acquired by the family of the present owner circa 1938

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Exhibited: Paris, Galerie Daniel Malingue, Kisling centenaire, 1891-1953, 1991, no. 3

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Published: Jean Kisling and Jean Dutourd, Kisling 1891-1953, Paris, 1995, vol. III, illustrated in colour p. 341 (pl. II)

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Notes: In 1912, Kisling with Picasso, Juan Gris and Max Jacob to Céret in French Catalonia, where he settled for almost a year. This town in the Pyrenées had already been the site of Picasso and Braque's revolutionary adventures in Cubism the previous year, and Kisling's technique likewise became more angular and sculptural there. The rare paintings known from 1912-13 also display his debt to Cézanne and the technique of passage that gives forms a remarkable solidity and spatial depth. The perspective in the present work, as if looking down on the model from above, confirms the artist's maturity at handling complex forms.

On his return to Paris in 1913, Kisling moved in to a studio on 3 rue Joseph-Bara in Montparnasse, where this work was probably painted. It was about this time that he began attracting the attention of Parisian critics and collectors. In the Salon d'automne that year, he exhibited three works that received a warm welcome. André Salmon wrote: 'Intelligence explodes in the modest entry by Kisling, a very young man who was already noted last year. He is not a Cubist, or in other words by virtue of his young age, some absurd copyist. He thinks as an artist of his time... His gravity is never applied: he paints with a joy well controlled by a fully armed open-mindedness. Very few young men impart such a show. His name must be remembered' (A. Salmon, Montjoie, 1913; quoted in J. Kisling, Kisling 1891-1953, Turin, 1971, vol. I, p. 84).

Fig. 1, Kisling in his Paris studio at 3, rue Joseph-Bara, circa 1915