Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York
Private Collection, New York
Gift of the above by 1956

New York, The Century Association, Paintings from the Collection of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1956
New York, Republican Club of the 9th Assembly District, Inc., Paintings from the Collection of Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller and Mr. Huntington Hartford, 1963

Jacques Dupin, Miró, Paris, 1961, no. 632, illustrated p. 532
Jacques Dupin & Ariane Lelong-Mainaud, Joan Miró, Catalogue raisonné. Paintings, 1942-1955, vol. III, Paris, 2000, no. 734, illustrated p. 62

This work is in excellent condition. Work is executed on a loose sheet of canvas. The edges are slightly frayed as a natural result of the piece having been cut. The surface is very slightly dirty. Artist pinholes at upper corners. Under UV light no inpainting is apparent.
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.
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Femme et oiseau devant la lune is one of the compositions which Miró completed in the late years of the war. This jewel-like picture is populated by Miró's Surrealist characters that came to dominate his art after the war - women aloft in the night sky. Miró gave up his practice of assigning poetic or elusive titles to his pictures as he had done in the 1930s, and now he favored more straight-forward classifications for his work.  Women, birds, stars and moons festooned these pictures, but the artist did not compromise his imaginative impulses when rendering these forms. In fact, it was these compositions from the mid-1940s that would inspire the creative production of the Abstract Expressionist artist Arshile Gorky in New York. After his trip to America in 1947, Miró himself would respond to the style of the Abstract Expressionists and begin a series of large-formatted paintings. During these years he made a virtue of these small-formatted, intensely colorful canvases, with their splendor and precision.

Miró completed Femme et oiseau devant la lune in Barcelona in 1944, not long after setting up his studio in the house where he was born. He had spent the duration of the war prior to this period in Palma de Mallorca, where he completed his celebrated Constellations series as homage to the brilliant night sky above the Mediterranean (see fig. 1). Miró continued to incorporate elements of this theme into his production for the next several decades, concentrating on the elegance of calligraphic lines punctuated by bursts of primary colors. But it is in the compositions from the 1940s that this aesthetic is at its freshest and most inspired.