Composition cubiste ou Portrait du Commandant Lambert

This work on paper dates from 1914, when Gleizes was serving in the military and stationed in Toul under Major Mayer-Simon Lambert, the regimental surgeon in charge of the military hospital there. Commandant Lambert was a great admirer of Gleizes’ work and made arrangements so that Gleizes could continue painting while fulfilling his military obligation. Gleizes had ample opportunity to observe and study his subject, as he was invited to paint in Commandant Lambert’s home. This period resulted in an important painting now in The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s collection, Portrait d'un médecin militaire (Varichon, vol. I, no. 555), for which the present work is a study. At least eight studies for the painting survive; Gleizes worked through them to resolve the compositional harmony of the painting, inflecting the otherwise formal Cubist genre with a color and a circular, dynamic rhythm.