Fernand Leger


This artist is a distinct artistic personality around 1908-9. A lot of his earlier work has been lost or was destroyed. Good examples of his early work are 

 

Think about how there are elements of Analytical Cubism in the limited palette of The Seamstress, faceting and cones and cylinders of Orphism and the limited but vibrant palette of Synthetic Cubism. Notice too how Woman Sewing creates it's own picture space, that is the cones and cylinders seem to inhabit some sort of space in their own right- this it how Leger is creating his own unified compositional picture space. 

 

These three works show his early response to Cubism as it was at the time. They are block-like formal reductions of volume within a conventional 2 dimensional space More Art History terms. He also Borrowed from Cezanne.  During the 1910s and 1911s he got friendly with the Delaunays (that's Robert and Sonia). He fell under the influence of The Red Tower, by Robert. Remember that Robert was getting into Orphism.