Title: Portrait of an Army Doctor
Description: Portrait of an Army Doctor (in French Portrait d'un médecin militaire) is a 1914-15 painting by the French artist, theorist and writer Albert Gleizes. Painted at the fortress city of Toul (Lorraine) while Gleizes served in the military during the First World War, the paintings abstract circular rhythms and intersecting aslant planes announce the beginning of the second synthetic phase of Cubism. The work represents Gleizes's commanding officer, Major Mayer-Simon Lambert (1870-1943), the regimental surgeon in charge of the military hospital at Toul. At least eight preparatory sketches, gouaches and watercolors of the work have survived, though Portrait of an Army Doctor is one of the only major oil paintings of the period. As other wartime works by Gleizes, Portrait of an Army Doctor represents a break from the first phase of Cubism. These wartime works mark "the beginning of an attempt to preserve specific and individual visual characteristics while experimenting with a radically different compositional treatment in which broad planes, angled from the perimeter, meet circles." (Robbins, 1964) Rather than based on the analysis of volumetric objects, the artist strove toward synthesis; something that originated in unity. Portrait of an Army Doctor—earlier forming part of the collection of art dealer Léonce Rosenberg—was purchased by Solomon R. Guggenheim at an important Gleizes exhibition at René Gimpel Galerie in New York City, December 1936 to January 1937 (no. 8). The work forms part of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection. It was gifted to the museum by Solomon Guggenheim in 1937 (the year of the formation of the foundation). The painting is in the permanent collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
Author(s): Albert Gleizes