Bozena Nikiel will include this painting in her forthcoming Metzinger catalogue raisonné.
In the years preceding the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Jean Metzinger worked at the very epicenter of the cubist shock wave that had revolutionized modern art. Indeed, he appeared to many observers of the scene to be the leader of the new movement. He showed his paintings in all the large public exhibitions where one went to view new art, including the Salon des Indépendents each spring and the Salon d'Automne later in the year. He was a major figure in the pivotal Section d'Or exhibition at the Galerie La Boètie in October 1912. With his colleague Albert Gleizes he wrote Du Cubisme, the first comprehensive and coherent text to date that explained the theories and aims of the new movement, which was published at the end of 1912. He penned numerous articles that were printed in periodicals throughout Europe.
The war disrupted the momentum of the cubist movement. Many artists volunteered or were called up for service, and could only paint while on leave. Metzinger was assigned to serve as a medical orderly in early 1915, but was invalided out of the service later that year. He was fortunate to be able to resume painting after only a short hiatus. The only major cubists still at work in Paris were Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, Diego Rivera and the sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, who as neutral aliens did not have to serve in the armed forces. That year Metzinger had his first solo exhibition at Léonce Rosenberg's Galerie L'Effort Moderne. He signed a contract with Rosenberg that offered him a modicum of security in a time of sparse sales in Paris (to some extent alleviated by the demand for new art in America) and war shortages of every kind.
During this time Metzinger maintained a close association with Gris, whose clear, precisely organized compositions greatly appealed to Metzinger's love of mathematical form. In a letter dated 4 July 1916 to Gleizes, who was living in New York, Metzinger wrote that he was moving towards a new synthesis, as distinct from the "materialist perspective of Gris" and the "romantic perspective of Picasso". It was a "metaphysical perspective. The actual result? A new harmony. Everything is number. The mind hates what cannot be measured: it must be reduced and made comprehensible. Painting, sculpture, music, architecture, all lasting art is never anything more than a mathematical expression of the relations that exist between what is inside and what is outside, the self and the world" (quoted in D. Robbins, "Jean Metzinger: At the Center of Cubism," Jean Metzinger in Retrospect, exh. cat., Iowa City, 1985, p. 21).
Metzinger's interest in balanced and measured form contributed to a trend toward a new rationalism and classicism in painting, which by 1918 would be known as, in Jean Cocteau's words, the rappel à ordre ("call to order"). These words became the guiding principle for the painters who showed at the Galerie de l'Effort Moderne (see note to lot 293). This later phase of synthetic cubism became known as "crystal" cubism. And indeed, these ideas are apparent in the present painting, which, despite its initial appearance of complexity, is notable for the clarity of its forms and the overall symmetry and balance of its composition. Moreover, there is certain somberness and restraint in Metzinger's use of color, in contrast to the stronger and more varied use of color in previous works and in contemporary pictures by his colleagues, which is probably attributable to his sorrow at the recent death of his first wife and the subsequent suicide of their daughter. Here, in a deliberate effort to transcend the fragile and transient nature of human existence--the traditional vanitas theme in still-life painting--Metzinger sought to reveal and take comfort in the underlying, essential and immutable qualities in the forms of humble domestic objects. A carafe, a wineglass, a cup, fruit in a compotier and a loaf of bread, set against the backdrop of a fireplace, represent a vision of domestic comfort and tranquility that has been harmonized and transfigured, so that it exists in a dimension outside of ordinary time and space.