Les trois Grâces, étude pour La Ville de Paris

This large canvas is a study for Robert Delaunay's monumental La Ville de Paris, which measures more than eight by thirteen feet and is now in the collection of the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou. Delaunay had already worked out the primary elements of the composition in this study. The three alternating female nudes at the center are a reference to the Greco-Roman goddesses known as the Three Graces, who were the subject of countless ancient marble sculptures, as well as paintings by Raphael and Rubens. In Delaunay's étude, as in the larger painting, the Graces are flanked by a cityscape on one side and schematic rendering of the Eiffel Tower on the other. The rigid steel construction of the tower, an icon of Parisian modernity, contrasts sharply with the classical, curvaceous nudity of the female bodies.
After working through his ideas in Les trois Grâces, étude pour La Ville de Paris, however, Delaunay made some changes to the final painting. He eliminated the rainbow that united the Graces and the Eiffel Tower, as well as the polychromatic halos over each figure's head. He expanded the cityscape on either side of the figures, and radically fractured his representation of the Eiffel Tower, nearly beyond recognition. The final painting is notable for its 'shattered'-looking surface and geometricized figures, qualities that are only loosely indicated in the preliminary study. Still, the artist here imagined all of the compositional elements that would ultimately appear in his Orphist masterpiece, which he exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris in 1912.