Mozart

In her essay on this painting, Lucy R. Lippard writes, "Dufy had a lifelong attachment to musical subjects, among which references to Mozart's rococo forms often appeared. 'My eyes were made to efface that which is ugly,' he once said, and his art finally reflected his involvement with fashion and theatre design in its acceptance of the conventionally pretty. This painting represents a transitional period in which the remnants of Dufy's fauve and cubist styles provided a solid skeleton of angular form and bright color on which to superimpose the calligraphic motifs that eventually comprised his mature style. The flat and decorative central area contrasts with the weightier cubist periphery. House, horn and score are drawn, rather than painted, as are the curling lines of the sculptured pediment, ironwork gate and vine at the right. They are not fragmented and integrated into the whole as they would have been in a cubist work, but are separated and pulled forward as such objects often were in French baroque illustration and ornament" (Museum of Modern Art, exh. cat., op. cit.).