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Lot Essay
Executed shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, Tasse, verres et bouteille (Le journal) is one of a small number of highly important collage paintings known as papiers colls that Gris created in a period of intense and continuous activity in the spring of 1914. Other examples of pre-eminent quality now hang in the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf (Verres, tasse th, Bouteille et pipe sur une table), Philadelphia Museum of Art (Le guridon), Museum of Modern Art, New York (Le petit djeuner) and Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (Bouteille de rhum et journal).
During this period, Gris' use of collage enabled the artist to develop his Cubist aesthetic in several new and highly individual ways. As a result, the papiers colls were widely considered to be the first works in Gris's oeuvre to establish the artist alongside Picasso and Braque as an important and leading innovator of the Cubist movement.
Gris' papiers colls of 1914 represent a significant breakthrough for the artist and encouraged him to reduce the illusionism and artifice of his previous painterly technique to a bare minimum. As Gris' close friend and dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler has pointed out: "Gris began to move towards conceptual painting in 1914 when he tried in his pictures to describe objects with as little complication as possible... . After 1914 Gris made every effort to say the maximum with a minimum of means, and this led him more and more towards invention, towards synthesis. As his composition became stronger it became increasingly less mechanical... ." (D-H Kahnweiler, Juan Gris: His life and Work, London 1969, p. 124).
In Tasse, verres et bouteille, Gris consciously plays with the notions of illusion by intermingling the real newspaper fragment with the artifice of the supposedly real wood-grained paper and the trompe l'oeil rendering of the wine bottle and the coffee cup. These elements are all conveyed with a carefully dissected and highly angular multiple perspective of intersecting planes which Douglas Cooper has described as, "a system of vertical, horizontal and triangular planes which overlap but which are not transparent." (The Cubist Epoch, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1971, p. 202).
Like the works of Braque and Picasso, Tasse, verres et bouteille is executed against an essentially flat background that encourages the cubist structure and its objects to stand out in contrast. Unlike Braque and Picasso however, Gris' papiers colls often incorporate strong colour. Here Gris has used a strong flat blue background. This elegantly contrasts with the ochre, white and grey pencil shading of the still-life to create a careful balance of colour that reinforces, rather than lessens the effect that this work is a painting and not a construction. Indeed, unlike Braque and Picasso who often painted on cardboard or panel and actively encouraged their works to look like relief constructions placed against the wall, Gris always pasted his papiers colls onto canvas so that they should be considered paintings.
With the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, Gris' intense period of concentration on his papiers colls was interrupted as the artist, alone and isolated in a foreign country at war, struggled to find friends, income and support. His dealer and principal benefactor, Kahnweiler was now no longer of any help to the artist. As a German citizen, Kahnweiler's business was closed down by the French authorities and his celebrated stock of Cubist masterpieces was sequestered by the French Government.
Tasse, verres et bouteille was one of these confiscated pictures. It was sold after the war in the fourth of the famous auctions of Kahnweiler's collection in Paris in 1923. Its subsequent provenance was to be no less distinguished, however, and the painting entered the superb collections of Sir Michael Sadler, Peter Watson and then that of Herbert and Nanette Rothschild in the early 1960s.
During this period, Gris' use of collage enabled the artist to develop his Cubist aesthetic in several new and highly individual ways. As a result, the papiers colls were widely considered to be the first works in Gris's oeuvre to establish the artist alongside Picasso and Braque as an important and leading innovator of the Cubist movement.
Gris' papiers colls of 1914 represent a significant breakthrough for the artist and encouraged him to reduce the illusionism and artifice of his previous painterly technique to a bare minimum. As Gris' close friend and dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler has pointed out: "Gris began to move towards conceptual painting in 1914 when he tried in his pictures to describe objects with as little complication as possible... . After 1914 Gris made every effort to say the maximum with a minimum of means, and this led him more and more towards invention, towards synthesis. As his composition became stronger it became increasingly less mechanical... ." (D-H Kahnweiler, Juan Gris: His life and Work, London 1969, p. 124).
In Tasse, verres et bouteille, Gris consciously plays with the notions of illusion by intermingling the real newspaper fragment with the artifice of the supposedly real wood-grained paper and the trompe l'oeil rendering of the wine bottle and the coffee cup. These elements are all conveyed with a carefully dissected and highly angular multiple perspective of intersecting planes which Douglas Cooper has described as, "a system of vertical, horizontal and triangular planes which overlap but which are not transparent." (The Cubist Epoch, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1971, p. 202).
Like the works of Braque and Picasso, Tasse, verres et bouteille is executed against an essentially flat background that encourages the cubist structure and its objects to stand out in contrast. Unlike Braque and Picasso however, Gris' papiers colls often incorporate strong colour. Here Gris has used a strong flat blue background. This elegantly contrasts with the ochre, white and grey pencil shading of the still-life to create a careful balance of colour that reinforces, rather than lessens the effect that this work is a painting and not a construction. Indeed, unlike Braque and Picasso who often painted on cardboard or panel and actively encouraged their works to look like relief constructions placed against the wall, Gris always pasted his papiers colls onto canvas so that they should be considered paintings.
With the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, Gris' intense period of concentration on his papiers colls was interrupted as the artist, alone and isolated in a foreign country at war, struggled to find friends, income and support. His dealer and principal benefactor, Kahnweiler was now no longer of any help to the artist. As a German citizen, Kahnweiler's business was closed down by the French authorities and his celebrated stock of Cubist masterpieces was sequestered by the French Government.
Tasse, verres et bouteille was one of these confiscated pictures. It was sold after the war in the fourth of the famous auctions of Kahnweiler's collection in Paris in 1923. Its subsequent provenance was to be no less distinguished, however, and the painting entered the superb collections of Sir Michael Sadler, Peter Watson and then that of Herbert and Nanette Rothschild in the early 1960s.