Paysage au clocher

A disciple of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, Roger de la Fresnaye began experimenting with Cubism as early as 1910 and soon became an avid promoter of the cause. He was however quickly disillusioned with the constraining nature of the pure Cubist model and its denial of color and human presence. While he appreciated the discipline brought forth by Cubism’s technique and that it allowed him to abstract and distill the essence of his subject matter, his vision of the world was much more lyrical and he quickly felt the need to push beyond the boundaries of the movement.
The years between 1910 and 1914 were the most prolific and progressive of de La Fresnaye’s career. Between 1910 and early 1911, he, Albert Gleizes, Fernand Léger, Jean Metzinger, Henri Le Fauconnier and Robert and Sonia Delaunay met regularly and exhibited together at the Salon des Indépendants. It was not until the Salon d’Automne of 1911, however, that the Duchamp brothers—Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Villon and Raymond Duchamp-Villon—together with Francis Picabia, discovered the stylistic interests they shared with de la Fresnaye and Gleizes’ artistic circle. Weekly meetings held at Jacques Villon’s studio in the Parisian suburb of Puteaux marked the formation of the seminal Section d’Or, of which Roger de La Fresnaye was a principle and founding member.
Paysage au clocher and Le Tournant, Meulan, both coming from the collection of Nannette and Herbert Rothschild, are prime examples of de La Fresnaye’s idiosyncratic experimentations with Cubism. Both works are from a series of about fifteen landscapes De la Fresnaye executed between 1911 and 1912. They depict the gently sloping hills around the town of Meulan, northwest of Paris. In the Paysage au clocher, the abstracted elements of the composition all live on the same plane, with its forms all clearly defined and organized around the bell tower at center, which gives the painting its name. In Le Tournant, Meulan, painted a year later, the foreground and background are clearly distinct, allowing for a greater sense of depth and perspective. The 1912 painting’s palette is also more lively, marked by the use blue and green hues.
De la Fresnaye’s use of color in Le Tournant, Meulan prefigures the Delaunays’ influence on the artist, who, by 1913, would embrace their abstract and color orientated Orphic Cubism. While de La Fresnaye’s compositions would remain resolutely representational, he was the first to inject high color into the flat, roughly blocked-out shapes characteristic of his work at the time.