?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 30,000 - $ 50,000
FERNAND LÉGER Nature morte.
Gouache and watercolor on wove paper, 1948. 660x508 mm; 26 1/4x20 inches. Initialed and dated in gouache, lower right recto. Signed and annotated by the publisher Louis Grosclaude, Lausanne, in pencil and with the black ink stamp, verso.
Provenance: Louis Grosclaude, Lausanne; M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York, with the label and their stock number MA 10300; private collection, Chicago.
The project that occupied Léger (1881-1955) most during the year 1948 was a series of illustrations for Arthur Rimbaud's poems Les Illuminations, published by Louis Grosclaude, Lausanne, which included 15 lithographs, 13 of which were colored by pochoir under the direction of the publisher. It was, next to his Cirque, 1950, which contained 63 lithographs altogether, Léger's most extensive publishing effort of his career. According to Saphire, "Many gouaches on themes found in Les Illuminations were done during and after the work on the book," by Léger working in Paris and Grosclaude, in Lausanne, held many of these while organizing and producing Les Illuminations, along with his lithographic printers, Roth and Sauter in Lausanne, for the works publication in 1949 (Saphire, Fernand Léger, The Complete Graphic Work, New York, 1978, pages 70-86 and 258-268).
