M. Camille Renault, Paris (his sale: Paris, Vincent F. Wapler, Hôtel Drouot, April 1, 1985, lot 189)
Galerie Daniel Malingue, Paris
Sale:  Ader Picard Tajan, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, March 18, 1986, lot 69
Acquired at the above sale by the present owne🙈r

Joann Moser, Jean Metzinger in Retrospect, Iowa City, 1985, no. 184, illustrated p.  106

Good condition. Original canvas. Under uv, significant inpainting to address craquelure in upper and lower right corners, scattered throughout peach pigments in her right arm, her chest, and the yellow pigments of her dress. Otherwise fine.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Jean Metzinger wrote to Léonce Rosenberg in September 1920 of a return to nature that seemed to him to be both constructive and concomitant with Cubism.

His exhibition at l'Effort Moderne at the outset of 1921 was exclusively of landscapes.  Linear perspective was precluded yet his formal vocabulary remained rhythmic. Christopher Green writes, "The willingness to adapt Cubist language to the look of nature was quickly to affect his figure painting too. From that exhibition of 1921 Metzinger continued to cultivate a style that was not only less obscure, but clearly took subject-matter as its starting point far more than an abstract play with flat pictorial elements....  Yet, style, in the sense of his own special way of handling form and color, remained for Metzinger the determining factor, something imposed on his subjects to give them their special pictorial character. His sweet, rich colour between 1921 and 1924 was unashamedly artificial, and is itself symptomatic of the fact that his return to lucid representation did not mean a return to nature approached naturalistically."  Metzinger himself wrote in 1922 "I know works whose thoroughly classical appearance conveys the most personal [the most original] the newest conceptions....  Now that certain Cubists have pushed their constructions so far as to take in clearly objective appearances, it has been declared that Cubism is dead [in fact] it approaches realization.'" (Christopher Green, Cubism and its Enemies, Modern Movements and Reaction in French Art, 1916-1928, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1987, pp. 52, 53, 166. See also Jean Metzinger, 'Tristesse d'Automne,' Montparnasse, December 1, 1922, p. 2. and Léonce Rosenberg, Cubisme et empirisme, 1920-1926, in E.M., no. 31, January 1927).

The strict constructive ordering that had become so pronounced in Metzinger's pre-1920 Cubist works is present in Jeune Femme à la Mandoline, in the careful positioning of form, color, and in the way in which Metzinger delicately assimilates the union of figure and background, of light and shadow. For example, the division of the model's features generates a subtle profile view that results from a free and mobile perspective.