Man Ray (1890-1976)

This work will be included in the Catalogue of the Paintings of Man Ray currently being prepared by Andrew Strauss and Timothy Baum.


I was greeted with a broad warm smile by Gertrude Stein, massive, in a woollen dress and woollen socks with comfortable sandals. . . . I had brought my camera. . . . Perhaps I was impressed by the staidness of her personality but it never occurred to me to try any fantasy or acrobatics with her physiognomy. . . .
(May Ray, 1921)

Beginning in the early 1920s and for a ten year period Man Ray executed several photographic portraits of Gertrude Stein. Indeed it was his images which first provided the readers of the doyenne of American letters and shaper of Modernism with their first glimpse of her appearance. Despite their close association, Stein would choose to acquire only one work by the artist, the present painting. Painted between 1926 to 1927, Course de Taureaux is a quintessentially modern work which in many respects was ahead of its time. Painted as a form of automatic painting, Man Ray applied paint directly from the tube to depict the confrontation in the arena and the shimmering crowd beyond. Course de Taureaux is a pioneering work which evokes the Corrida images executed by Picasso in paint and ceramic media some thirty years thereafter.