For Léger, smoke and smokers were symbols of modern industrial life and the working class, with whom he closely identified. The smoker’s face is seen in three-quarter view. His head is turned to the left (the back of it is represented by the elongated half-oval shape at upper center), and his red pipe juts out, with puffs of smoke floating up to the upper left corner. The figure’s massive body is a conglomeration of rotund swirling parts. This is the type of painting that led Parisian critic Guillaume Apollinaire to characterize Léger’s work as “cylindrical painting.”
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Inscription: Titled, signed, and dated (verso, upper left, in black paint): LE FUMEUR / F. LEGER / 14
[Galerie Kahnweiler, Paris, 1914; inv. no. 2201, photo no. 6052; sequestered Kahnweiler stock, December 12, 1914–21; first Kahnweiler sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, June 13, 1921, no. 58, sold for Fr 1,000, to Helertot]; Helertot (from 1921); Baroness Eva Gebhard Gourgaud, New York (until d. 1959); Eva Gebhard Gourgaud Foundation, Paris (1959–60; the foundation’s sale, Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., New York, March 16, 1960, no. 85, sold for $82,500, to an unidentified bidder from New York); Edward A. Bragaline, New York (in 1963–83; sold in 1983 to Thaw and Acquavella); [E. V. Thaw & Co. Inc., New York, and Acquavella Galleries, New York, 1983–84; sold in January 1984 to Lauder]; Leonard A. Lauder, New York (from 1984)
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New York. Museum of Modern Art. "Fernand Léger," February 15–May 12, 1998, extended to June 2, 1998, unnumbered cat. (p. 173).
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Matthew Affron inCubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection. Ed. Emily Braun and Rebecca Rabinow. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2014, pp. 91–92, 96, no. 37, ill. p. 95 (color).
Anna Jozefacka and Luise Mahler inCubism: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection. Ed. Emily Braun and Rebecca Rabinow. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2014, pp. 271–72, fig. 37 (reproduced in the June 13–14, 1921, Kahnweiler sequestration sale catalogue, Hôtel Drouot, Paris).
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