西蒙畫廊, 巴黎
威爾頓斯坦公司, 倫敦（1936年前購入）
梅雅畫廊, 倫敦
私人收藏

倫敦, 維恩斯坦公司, 「安德烈•馬森作品展」, 1936年, 品號11

帕特里克-吉爾•帕爾森、丹尼爾-亨利•康恩維勒爾, 《一個大商家的冒險》, 巴黎, 1990年, 圖版頁170

桂特•馬森、馬丁•馬森、凱瑟琳•勒瓦, 《安德烈•馬森畫作專題目錄1919-1941》, 第2册, 巴黎, 2010年, 品號1934-9, 圖版頁179

This painting is in excellent condition. Original canvas. The paint layers are stable. Under UV light no inpainting is apparent. There is an uneven and old layer of varnish, most likely applied by the artist.
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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Masson painted Le Jardin saccagé while living in Spain during the tumultuous years leading up to the Civil War. He moved to Spain in 1934 for two years, shortly after he had broken with André Breton and the increasingly propagandistic Surrealist circle. Shortly after moving there, he embarked upon a series of works focused on insects set among brilliantly-colored landscapes, invoking the violence in Spain at the time. Masson carefully orchestrated the interplay of these characters, creating a compositional tension between the effusive palette and the complex anatomy of the insects.  Le Jardin saccagé presents this motif on a m🤪onumental scale, one rar🐻ely seen in Masson's early work.

William Rubin has written of the significance of these this series, "Though hallucinatory in character, the Insect pictures began from very close direct observation. Masson, who can spend hours 'interrogating' a square foot of earth, wanted to express in these pictures what he calls the 'magnetic aspect' of the Spanish landscape. The insects are the best works Masson produced during his stay in Spain from 1934 through 1936, perhaps because they were prompted by an immediate and personal kind of motif" (William Rubin & Carolyn Lanchner, André Masson and Twentieth-Century Painting, 1976, New York, p. 40). The celebrated dealers, Wildenstein and Company launched a seminal exhibition for Masson that highlighted the most successful of these works, including Le Jardin saccagé, in London in 1936.