Planeix Collection, Paris
Philippe Cazeau-Odermatt, Paris

Berne, Kunsthalle, Auguste Herbin (1882-1960) Retrospective, 1963, no. 40
Cambrai, Musée de Cambrai, Auguste Herbin (1882-1960) Retrospective, 1980, no. 31

Geneviève Claisse, Herbin, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, Lausanne, 1993, no. 605, illustrated p. 386, illustra🦋ted in color p. 116

Work is in very good condition. Canvas is lined. There is scattered thin craquelure across the surface. Surface is clean. Under UV light: small spots of inpainting in the gray semi circle towards upper right and a few other scattered dots toward edges. Otherwise fine.
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The seminal 1907 Cézanne retrospective at the Paris Salon d'Automne had a major influence on a whole generation of artists.  In its wake, younger artists, including Herbin, shifted directions radically and started treating nature with "the cylinder, the cone and the sphere," following Cézanne's call. 

La Barque, painted in 1927, is an exceptional example of Herbin's inventive approach to the Cubist landscape. While in the early years of Cubism Picasso, Braque and Gris mostly limited their palettes to black, browns, grays and off-whites, Herbin continued to use color.  In the present work, the artist distills the landscape into a coded language of rectangles, semi-circles and other geometric devices.  Herbin alternates different shades of red with yellow, blue, black and brown to create what would become his last major cubist landscape, before immersing himself completely in pure abstraction.

Geneviève Claisse writes, " Herbin at forty-five years old, does not head hastily into the language of curves. The twelve compositions painted in the first half of this year combine the rigidity of rectangles among the play of curved forms. From this interesting transitional series we retain La barque (The Small Boat), La Spirale jaune (The Yellow Spiral) and especially the large Composition (195 x 130 cm), a strictly two-dimensional work.

When undertaking the eleven paintings which make up the next period in his work, Herbin forsakes the geometry and engages in the difficult challenge of abstract composition, reduced to only curves and undulating forms" (Herbin, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, Lausanne, 1993, p. 117, translated from th𓂃e French).