Lot 688: Jeanne Rij-Rousseau (French, 1870-1956), "City View", c. 1920; oil/canvas, signed, provenance.

Important French cubist painter and philosopher. Rij-Rousseau arrived in Paris in 1890. She became involved with a circle of artists which included Signac, Serusier, Vuillard, and Denis. Her approach to painting was based on her development of a complete scheme for each work, based on scientific principles of color, light, and geometry, even before starting to paint. She was interested in the visual phenomenon of "color wave vibrations" which would be the counterpart to sound waves in music. She called this "vibrisme". This concept would be very important to the work of the Futurists, especially Le Fresnay, Delaunay, and Jacques Villon. She continued to experiment with practical applications of this theory in the first decade of the twentieth century, through Cubism; and greatly influenced the thought of her friends, Juan Gris, Georges Braque, and Ferdinand Leger. She exhibited regularly from 1910 through the late 1930s.