MAX WEBER
Still Life with a Vase and Lemon.
Watercolor and pencil on paper, 1918. 321x218 mm; 12¾x8¾ inches. Signed and dated "Jan. 6, '18" in pencil, lower right recto.Provenance: Private collection, Chicago.Perhaps more than any other American artist returning from Paris in the first decade of the 20th century, Weber (1881-1961), an avid student of art history who possessed a critical eye for the avant-garde, skillfully incorporated the new directions of French modern art into his work. Weber absorbed the primitivism of his good friend, the self-taught artist Henri Rousseau, the early Cubism of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso and the Fauvism of Henri Matisse and Émile Othon Frieze.Born in Poland and emigrating to Brooklyn at the age of ten, Weber studied at the Pratt Institute under pioneering modernist teacher, Arthur Wesley Dow, who was also an important influence on Weber as an accomplished printmaker and painter himself. In the early 1920s, Weber traveled to Paris just in time to view a major Paul Cézanne retrospective, as well as visit Gertrude Stein’s artistic salon and take classes at Matisse’s private academy. Weber worked in singular modern style throughout most of his career and influenced many following generations of American artists.