Etude pour La conquête de l'air

De La Fresnaye executed this drawing as a study for the first version of La conquête de l'air, painted in 1913 (Seligman, no. 135; Private collection). The scene recounts the artist's conversations about aeronautics with his brother Henri, who was the director of the Nieuport airplane factory in Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris. The third figure at right was eliminated from the second version of this subject (Seligman, no. 136; private collection) and the version définitive, also painted in 1913 (Seligman, no. 137; The Museum of Modern Art, New York). It is indisputably de la Fresnaye’s most ambitious and important work, and is considered to form "a complete expression of the talent and the intent of the artist" (G. Seligman, Roger de la Fresnaye, With a Catalogue Raisonné, London, 1969, p. 48).