Provenance

Léonce Rosenberg

French, 1877 - 1947

Explore Selected Works

A man, woman, a small table, chair, and two fragments of walls float on an octagonal, straw-colored floor amid a landscape with bare, rolling, olive-green hills in this stylized, vertical painting. The man and woman have pale skin and are positioned on opposite sides of the table from each other. To our left, the heavily-built man stands with his right hand, to our left, planted on the white tablecloth that nearly reaches the floor. He is cleanshaven with curly black hair, a round face, and a prominent nose. His large, dark eyes are deeply set, and a few cross-hatched black lines could indicate shadows or a black eye. His rumpled suit, vest, shirt, and tie are all sand brown. He looks toward a woman seated on our side of the table, opposite him. Her body is angled away from us to our right. Her blond hair is pulled up and she wears a white, sleeveless, floor-length dress that drapes over her shoulders and down her back. Her wooden chair has a teal-blue inset panel at the back and turned legs, and it sits on a pumpkin-orange, rectangular area rug. The paneled floor seems to float in the landscape. The robin’s egg-blue door to our right, opposite the woman, opens inward in its frame, and the corner above the top right is stacked with laid bricks. A sliver of wall alongside the door frame suggests the turning of a corner in the room. To our left, behind the man, a second fragment of yellow-paneled wall stands behind the corner of a dark, mahogany dresser or cabinet carved along its back with curving, S-shaped molding. A framed picture showing the head and shoulders of a woman in tones of white and gray against a periwinkle-blue background hangs at the top of the yellow wall. The curving back of a mint-green, upholstered chair peeks out over the woman’s right shoulder. The floor is set among barren hills with a watery blue sky above. The painting is created mostly with areas of flat colors with outlines and hatched shading in black and white, like pen strokes. The artist signed the painting on the floating floor near the lower right corner, “G. de Chirico.”
Giorgio De Chirico, Conversation among the Ruins, 1927, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.107

Conversation among the Ruins

Giorgio De Chirico · 1927 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1963.10.107

Two angular, cream-white buildings flanking a central, stylized tree are surrounded by brown soil, small animals, and farmhouse objects like watering cans and buckets beneath a clear, azure-blue sky in this square landscape painting. We look straight onto the buildings and slightly down onto the earth in front of us. About a third of the way up the composition, the horizon is lined with trees and mountains in the deep distance. The long, spindly branches of the central tree nearly reach the top edge of the painting and abstracted, sickle-shaped leaves are silhouetted against the sky so no leaves overlap. The far edge of the whitewashed structure to our left is cropped. The façade is pierced by two small rectangular windows and an arched hatch at the top under a winch. The back end of a horse is visible through an open door at the bottom center. Horizontal bands in front of the building suggest furrows in plowed earth, and a single stalk of corn grows up into the scene, seeming close to us. A pen protected by netting stretches out in front of the second structure, to our right of center. That wood-frame building has a triangular peaked roof, and the left half is open, like a lean-to. A goat, rooster, birds, and several rabbits occupy the pen. Watering cans, buckets and pails, a hoe, newspaper, lizard, and snail are spaced around the buildings. A tiny stylized person, perhaps a baby, appears in the distance between the buildings near a well where a woman works. A covered wagon, a round mill, trees, and plants fill the rest of the space between the buildings. A disk-like moon hangs in the sky to the right of the tree. The artist signed and dated the lower left corner, "Miro. 1921-22."
Joan Miró, The Farm, 1921-1922, oil on canvas, Gift of Mary Hemingway, 1987.18.1

The Farm

Joan Miró · 1921-1922 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1987.18.1

Angular, geometric shapes in charcoal and smoke black, pewter and silver gray, white, pale pink, and coral orange pile up to form a rough pyramid shape that fills the height of this square, abstract painting. More fragmented shapes in cobalt, azure, and light blue fill the upper left and right corners to either side of the apex, and one triangular space on its middle left. The artist has inscribed, “LA PROCESSION SEVILLE” in black capital letters near the top right edge and “Picabia” in the lower right.
Francis Picabia, The Procession, Seville, 1912, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Fund and Gift of Barbara Rothschild Michaels from the Collection of Herbert and Nannette Rothschild, 1997, 1997.43.1

The Procession, Seville

Francis Picabia · 1912 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1997.43.1

We look down onto a pile with a newspaper, theater program, pipe, a black and white checkerboard, and other objects painted as abstracted, geometric forms on a tabletop in this nearly square still life painting. Near the center, a rectangular form like a newspaper is painted with the headline “LE JOURNAL.” Next to it, to our left, a playbill has the name “FANTOMAS” written in black against a parakeet-green background, above black mask and a “65” in a circle below. There are blocks of stylized, painted wood grain and other areas of color that do not line up with the objects represented. For instance, this conflicting pattern means that the lettering of the newspaper changes from white against the brown woodgrain to green against white. Moreover, seemingly unconnected to the objects, colors, and spaces below, yet more objects like a goblet and bowl of fruit are painted with white outlines that overlay the wood and objects below. A checkerboard pattern is layered under the woodgrain and papers, near the lower right corner, and another pattern like architectural molding carved with stylized leaves runs along the back, above the papers. The papers and a few other objects seem to cast shadows on the blocks of color behind them, so areas of lilac purple at the top left and burgundy red along the right edge read visually as a background behind everything. The artist signed the work in black on the lower left corner: “Juan Gris 8-1915.”
Juan Gris, Fantômas, 1915, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Fund, 1976.59.1

Fantômas

Juan Gris · 1915 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1976.59.1