Man with Pipe

Man with Pipe (French: Le Fumeur) is a Cubist painting by the French artist Jean Metzinger. It has been suggested that the sitter depicted in the painting represents either Guillaume Apollinaire or Max Jacob. The work was exhibited in the spring of 1914 at the Salon des Indépendants, Paris, Champ-de-Mars, March 1–April 30, 1914, no. 2289, Room 11. A photograph of Le Fumeur was published in Le Petit Comtois (Au Salon des Indépendants, Les chefs-d'œuvre modernes), 13 March 1914, for the occasion of the exhibition. In July 1914 the painting was exhibited in Berlin at Herwarth Walden’s Galerie Der Sturm, with works by Albert Gleizes, Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Jacques Villon.

Le Fumeur, titled Man with Pipe and dated c. 1912, forms part of the permanent collection of the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (gift of G. David Thompson, 1953).

Le Fumeur, signed "JMetzinger" (lower left) is an oil painting on canvas with dimensions 129.7 x 96.68 cm (51 1/16 x 38 1/16 in.), representing an elegantly dressed man—sitting in what appears to be a café—perhaps Guillaume Apollinaire or Max Jacob, two long-time friend of the artist. The vertical composition is painted in a geometrically Cubist style. The sitter, smoking a pipe and wearing a fashionable black felt derby hat, is seen in multiple perspective; from different points of view simultaneously.

The global composition is highly geometricized, with various planes, angles, layers and facets, as are specific elements depicted on the trompe-l'œil wooden table in the foreground (as if seen from above). The roundness and shading of the man's attire (particularly in the sleeves) stands in sharp contrast to the angular momentum engendered by the overall cubic construction of the piece; while the chairs in the lower half of the work and flowered wallpaper of the background are treated in comparatively naturalistic detail, similar to the backgrounds of late 19th century portraits.

The colors used by Metzinger, accentuated by a contrasting range of blacks and whites, are bright and largely unmixed. The move away from more subtle tonalities of his earlier Cubist work; Portrait of an American Smoker, Portrait of Albert Gleizes (both from 1911–12) closely relates Le Fumeur with a series of portraits painted by Metzinger circa 1913; Woman with a Fan, Portrait of Max Jacob, and La Fumeuse. As in these latter works, the decorative patterning assumes a principal role in the composition.

In his review of an exhibition at Galerie Der Sturm during the month of July, 1914, Guillaume Apollinaire writes of Metzinger’s Man with Pipe as a portrait of himself:

Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Duchamp-Villon, and Jacques Villon are currently exhibiting at the Der Sturm gallery in Berlin. Jean Metzinger represents an extremely sophisticated art. He completes to perfection what he paints—not satisfying himself by drawing, he states. If Mr. Ingres, in spite of his considerable reputation, did not have somewhat restrained press, I would say he has the Japanese qualities of Ingresque painting. Fumeur, Tête de Femme, Marine, Nuit, Paysage, La Liseuse, and En Canot, which is with Fumeur cited above and said to be a portrait of myself, his masterpiece, this is what connoisseurs of the Spree will fight over with perseverance. (Apollinaire, Paris-Journal, 3 July 1914)

Metzinger had painted the portrait of Apollinaire on a prior occasion. Late 1909 or early 1910, Metzinger painted a Cubist portrait of Apollinaire. In his Vie anecdotique, 16 October 1911, the poet proudly writes: "I am honored to be the first model of a Cubist painter, Jean Metzinger, for a portrait exhibited in 1910 at the Salon des Indépendants." It was not only the first Cubist portrait, according to Apollinaire, but it was also the first great portrait of the poet exhibited in public, prior to others by Louis Marcoussis, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso and Mikhail Larionov. Apollinaire became the subject of at least one other work by Metzinger; Étude pour le portrait d'Apollinaire, 1911 (Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris).