Footnotes

Provenance
Ateliers Mourlot Collection, Paris (acquired directly from the artist).
Mourlot Collection, Paris (by descent from the above).
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1993.


Please note that the present work is accompanied by the lithographic poster, printed by the Ateliers Mourlot, for which it is a preparatory study.

By the middle of the twentieth century, the Ateliers Mourlot in Paris had become the epicentre of innovation in French printmaking. Its director Fernand Mourlot had greatly expanded the activities of his grandfather Francois Mourlot's studio – founded in 1852 as a producer of fine wallpaper – by collaborating with leading Modern artists on traditional limestone lithography. Pablo Picasso, Alexander Calder, Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse and Fernand Léger were among this coterie, who sought exciting new forms of expression from the medium. Mourlot encouraged them to apply their designs directly to the limestone matrices in order to create raw and striking lithographic editions.

The artist poster rose out of this zeitgeist as a critical new artform. With his eclectic artistic experience, including as an illustrator, designer, ceramicist, filmmaker and painter, Léger relished the wide audience his lithographic designs could reach on the bustling city streets of Paris. He created exuberant, vibrant posters featuring his iconic motifs – with birds being a favourite among them. By imbuing fine art with the ubiquity of popular culture, Léger succeeded in energising and reinforcing both his artistic persona and his brand.

The present gouache offers a privileged glimpse into Léger's working method and evidences the significant time and effort he poured into his poster designs, which are now valued as precursors to Pop Art. Léger has harnessed the smooth tones and rapid fluidity of gouache to execute a playful composition that speaks with his trademark lyricism and dynamism – one that will be served greatly by its eventual reproducibility. The simplified forms, grounded in Cubism and Futurism, are rendered in bold and primary colours – a practical choice for Mourlot's printmaking method, and a fitting advertisement for his exhibition of new sculptures at the fashionable Galerie Louis Carré. This work has remained in the collection of the Ateliers Mourlot since its genesis, thence passing to the Mourlot family heirs, from whom the present owner acquired it in 1993.