is a Cubist oil painting created by Jean Metzinger in 1913. The work is referred to in various publications as , , , , In the Canoe, The Boat, On the Beach, , , and . The painting was exhibited in Paris at the 1913 Salon d'Automne. The following year it was shown at , 45th Exhibition of SVU Mánes in Prague, February–March 1914 (a collection of works assembled by Alexandre Mercereau). This "Survey of Modern Art" was one of the last prewar exhibitions in Prague. was exhibited again, in July of the same year, at the , Berlin. The painting was acquired from Herwarth Walden in 1916 by Georg Muche at .
was exhibited in the , National Gallery, Berlin, 1930, where it had been housed since 1927. The work was acquired by the National Gallery in 1936 (on deposit by the ), where it was placed on display in Room 5. It was later confiscated by the Nazis around 1936, displayed at the Degenerate Art Exhibition () in Munich and other cities, 1937–38, and has been missing ever since.
Description is a large oil painting on canvas with approximate dimensions , representing an elegantly dressed woman painted in a Cubist style holding an umbrella while she sits in a canoe or small boat. Water with undulating waves or ripples and two other boats are visible in the background. The vertical composition is divided, fragmented or faceted into series of non-Euclidean spherical arcs, hyperbolic triangles, rectangles, squares, planes or surfaces delineated by contrasting form.Ludwig Steinfeld, Felix Ramholz: Der Sonntagsmaler Felix Muche-Ramholz, Ernst Wasmuth Verlag Tübingen/Berlin 1993 Jean Metzinger in Retrospect, Joann Moser, with an essay by Daniel Robbins, The University of Iowa Museum of Art, J. Paul Getty Trust, University of Washington Press), 1985
Aimed at a large audience of the rather than the intimate setting of a gallery—just as other paintings by Metzinger of the pre-World War I period such as (The Blue Bird) exhibited at the in the spring of 1913—there can be found in a continuity that transits between the foreground and background. For example, the two boats in the 'background' are smaller than the boat in the 'foreground' within which the model is sitting, consistent with classical perspective in that objects appear smaller as distance from the observer increases. However, to be perfectly consistent one would expect the boat on the top left of the composition to be smaller still than the boat just left of the models head. There is no perspectival fusion between objects close and far, yet the notion of depth perception has not been abolished. Overall, the spatial attributes of the scene are disjointed and flattened to the point where no absolute frame of reference can be determined.Daniel Robbins, "Jean Metzinger, At the Center of Cubism", in Jean Metzinger in Retrospect, The University of Iowa Museum of Art, J. Paul Getty Trust, University of Washington Press), 1985, pp. 9–23
The chronophotography of Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey had a profound influence on the beginnings of Cubism. These photographic motion studies particularly interested artists that would later form groups known as the and , including Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes and Marcel Duchamp.
A predecessor to cinematography and moving film, chronophotography involved a series or succession of different images, originally created and used for the scientific study of movement. These studies would directly influence Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2Tomkins, Calvin (1996). Duchamp: A Biography. U.S.: Henry Holt and Company, and could also be read into Metzinger's work of 1910–1914, though rather than simultaneously superimposing successive images to depict the motion, Metzinger represents the subject at rest viewed from multiple angles; the dynamic role is played by the artist rather than the subject.Étienne-Jules Marey, La Science du mouvement et l'image du temps [The science of movement and the image of time],
Though not the first painting by Metzinger to employ the concept of multiple perspective—three years had passed since he first propounded the idea in ,Jean Metzinger, Note sur la peinture, Pan (Paris), October–November 1910 published in 1910— arguably exemplifies such pictorial processes, while still maintaining elements of recognizable form (the number 3, perhaps suggestive of a regatta, the woman, the umbrella, the boats); the extreme activity of geometric faceting visible in is not pushed to the point that any understandable link between physicality or naturalness is lost to the viewer. Yet, what is achieved is fundamentally anti-naturalistic.
The color schemes of other paintings executed during the same period, such as , , () or (Woman with a Fan), suggests that at the time of painting Metzinger had already moved away from the limited palette of 1911 and 1912.
On the opening day of the 1913 Salon d'Automne, art critic Louis Paillard, in a review published in , writes of Metzinger's entry:
Guillaume Apollinaire, in his review of the published in , writes of ():
Dimensions
The dimensions of are undocumented. However, Metzinger's painting is portrayed in a variety of black and white photographs shot between 1914 and 1930, and appears in a film recorded at the 1937 Degenerate Art Exhibition. Two of these images show the work hanging next to paintings of known dimensions. The earliest is a photograph taken in Prague, 1914, published in the magazine , where the painting is seen hanging next to Metzinger's (Woman with a Fan), 1913, oil on canvas, , Art Institute of Chicago. (Czech cubist painting), Kubisme (in Dutch)Gladys C, Fabres, Ann Dumas, Norman Rosenthal, Capital of the Arts, 1900-1968, Royal Academy of Arts, London, Musée Guggenheim, Bilbao, Spain, 2002, via Tobeen.org
Another image, taken at the Degenerate Art Exhibition in 1937, shows next to Willi Baumeister, Handstand, 1923, oil on canvas, .
A straightforward calculation based on the dimensions of paintings visible in both of these images reveals dimensions for of . This corresponds to a standard stretcher () format referred to as 80 Figure (80 F). Chassis sizes in France are based on format P for (landscape), relating to the principles of art and the diagonal of Fibonacci; the formats M for (seascapes); and F for (portrait), such as , are based on the Golden ratio. Most, if not all, of Metzinger's works from the period, including his monumental , are painted on canvases corresponding to these traditional formats; proportioning his works to approximate the golden ratio, in the belief that this proportion is aesthetically pleasing. The golden section () and other similar geometric configurations symbolized for Metzinger and his colleagues a belief in order and the significance of mathematical proportions, because it reflected patterns and relationships occurring in nature. Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, the Duchamp brothers, and other members of the , were passionately interested in mathematics., Numéro spécial, 9 October 1912, , no. 1, 9 October 1912, pp. 1–2.Roger Allard, , , June 1911, pp. 57–64. In Mark Antliff and Patricia Leighten, A Cubism Reader, Documents and Criticism, 1906–1914, The University of Chicago Press, 2008, pp. 178–191, 330
The golden proportion, upon which may have been based, represented simultaneously a continuity with past traditions and current trends in related fields, while leaving open future developments in the arts.
History The year 1913 saw the Cubist movement continuing to evolve, wrote Albert Gleizes:
The changes it had already undergone since the Indépendants of 1911 could leave people in no doubt as to its nature. Cubism was not a school, distinguished by some superficial variation on a generally accepted norm. It was a total regeneration, indicating the emergence of a wholly new cast of mind. Every season it appeared renewed, growing like a living body. Its enemies could, eventually, have forgiven it if only it had passed away, like a fashion; but they became even more violent when they realised that it was destined to live a life that would be longer than that of those painters who had been the first to assume the responsibility for it.Albert Gleizes, The Epic, From immobile form to mobile form, 1913–1914, First published in German, entitled Kubismus, 1928. The French version, L'Epopée (The Epic), was published in the journal Le Rouge et le Noir, 1929. The first version was written in response to an invitation from the Bauhaus in 1925. Translation by Peter Brooke
At the 1913 Salon des Indépendants could be seen a very large work of Jean Metzinger's - L'Oiseau Bleu; L'Equipe de Cardiff from Robert Delaunay; two important canvasses from Léger; still lifes and L'Homme au Café from Juan Gris; enthusiastic new work from La Fresnaye and from Marcoussis, and from others again; and finally, from myself, Les Joueurs de Football.
Again, to the Salon d'Automne of 1913 - a salon in which Cubism was now the predominating tendency - Metzinger sent the great picture called En Bâteau, La Fresnaye La Conquête de l'Air, myself Les Bâteaux de Pêche and La Ville et le Fleuve. If the first moment of surprise had passed by, the interest Cubism excited was as great as ever. The anger and the enthusiasm had not changed sides, our enemies held to their guns. It is enough for proof to read the diatribes of Louis Vauxcelles in Gil Blas for that year, 1913, and the panegyrics of Guillaume Apollinaire in L'Intransigeant.Guillaume Apollinaire, Le Vernissage du Salon d’Automne, L'Intransigeant, Paris, 15 November 1913, Gallica, Bibliothèque nationale de France
En Canot was acquired at the Galerie Der Sturm in 1916 by the artist Georg Muche, whose father was a naïve painter and art collector known as Felix Muche-Ramholz.Ludwig Steinfeld, Felix Ramholz: Der Sonntagsmaler Felix Muche-Ramholz, Ernst Wasmuth Verlag Tübingen/Berlin 1993, Gottfried Sello, Felix Ramholz in der Reihe Große Maler, Zeitschrift Brigitte, 1974. The Galerie Der Sturm founded in 1912 by Herwarth Walden in Berlin became the core of Berlin's modern art scene, lasting a decade. Starting with an exhibition of Fauves and Der Blaue Reiter, followed by the introduction in Germany of Cubism and Italian Futurism."Herwarth Walden. Ein Essayist der Moderne", Paleari, Moira, Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik, 2010
En Canot was exhibited in 1930 at the Kronprinzenpalais, National Gallery, Berlin, along with works by Willi Baumeister, Oskar Schlemmer, Rudolf Belling and others (works later found in Entartete Kunst).Gallery in the Kronprinzer-Palais, Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 1930. Photograph showing Metzinger's En Canot (Im Boot) in situ, Figure 92
It was subsequently confiscated by the German Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, RMVP or Propagandaministerium) in 1936 or 1937 and displayed at the Degenerate Art exhibition (Entartete Kunst) in Munich. The exhibition traveled to several other cities in Germany and Austria. The show, mounted by the Nazis, consisted of modern art chaotically hung and accompanied by text labels deriding the art. Paintings were hung crowded together, some with no frames, alongside racist slogans denigrating the artists for "insulting German womanhood" and revealing "sick minds." It was designed to inflame public opinion against Modernism. The painting was apparently moved to Güstrow by the Rote Armee (Red Army) and has been missing ever since.Jean Metzinger, En Canot (Im Boot), Beschlagnahmeinventar "Entartete Kunst", "Degenerate Art" Research Center, FU BerlinEntartete Kunst (Degenerate Art), complete inventory of over 16,000 artworks confiscated by the Nazi regime from public institutions in Germany, 1937-1938, Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda. Victoria and Albert Museum, Jean Metzinger, Im Kanu, inv. 16056, Volume 1 p. 36