Football Players

{{Short description|Painting by Albert Gleizes}}{{Distinguish|football player}}{{Infobox artwork | image_file=Albert Gleizes, 1912-13, Les Joueurs de football (Football Players), oil on canvas, 225.4 x 183 cm, National Gallery of Art.jpg | image_size=300px | title=Football Players | other_language_1=French | other_title_1=Les Joueurs de football | artist=Albert Gleizes | year=1912–13 | medium=Oil on canvas | height_metric=225.4 | width_metric=183 | height_imperial=88.75 | width_imperial=72.04 | metric_unit=cm | imperial_unit=in | city=Washington D.C. | museum=National Gallery of Art }}

'''''Football Players''''' (French: ''Les Joueurs de football'') is a 1912–13 painting by the French artist Albert Gleizes. The work was exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants, Paris, March–May 1913 (no. 1293). From September through December 1913 the painting was exhibited at Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon, Berlin (no. 147). The work was featured at Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona, 29 November–12 December 1916 (no. 31), Gleizes' first one-person show.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://pandora.girona.cat/viewer.vm?id=2934322&view=dalmau&lang=en |title=Exposició Albert Gleizes, 29 November – 12 December 1916, Galeries Dalmau, Barcelona (catalogue) |access-date=30 April 2018 |archive-date=13 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200813035847/https://pandora.girona.cat/viewer.vm?id=2934322&view=dalmau&lang=en |url-status=dead }}</ref> The work was again exhibited at Galeries Dalmau 16 October–6 November 1926 (no. 7).<ref>[http://pandora.girona.cat/viewer.vm?id=2934434&amp;view=dalmau&amp;lang=en Exposició de Modernisme Pictòric Català. 1926], Galeries Dalmau, Barcelona, 16 October – 6 November 1926 (cat. no. 7). Ajuntament de Girona</ref>

Stylistically Gleizes' ''Football Players'' exemplifies the principle of mobile perspective laid out in ''Du "Cubisme"'', written by himself and French painter Jean Metzinger. Guillaume Apollinaire wrote about ''Les Joueurs de football'' in an article titled "Le Salon des indépendants", published in ''L'Intransigeant'', 18 March 1913, and again in "A travers le Salon des indépendants", published in ''Montjoie!'', Numéro Spécial, 18 March 1913.<ref name="Montjoie">[http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k891142h/f6.image "A travers les Indépendants"], ''Montjoie!'', Numéro Spécial, Guillaume Apollinaire, 18 March 1913</ref>

==Description== thumb|Cyrile Lowe being tackled by Jacques Dedet in the 1913 France–England match. thumb|''Le Plein Air, Revue illustrée de tous les sports'', 24 April 1913 [[File:Toulouse RCF rugby Championnat 1912.JPG|thumb|Final of the ''Championnat de France'' of rugby football (1912) between Racing club de France and Stade toulousain – "a melée at the 22 meters of racing."]] ''Les Joueurs de football'' is an oil painting on canvas with dimensions 225.4 x 183&nbsp;cm (88 3/4 x 72 1/16 in.) signed and dated "Albert Gleizes 1912–13" at the lower left.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |title=Football Players by Albert Gleizes |url=https://www.nga.gov/artworks/52106-football-players |access-date=23 March 2026 |website=National Gallery of Art: Artworks |language=en-US}}</ref>

After at least one preliminary sketch,<ref>''Study for Football Players (Dessin pour Les Joueurs de football)'' published in Montjoie! Salon des Indépendants, no. 4, March 29, 1913</ref> Gleizes began working on this painting in 1912 and finished it before exhibiting the work at the Salon des Indépendants, March 1913.<ref>[http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k8892045/f131.image Société des artistes indépendants: catalogue de la 29ème exposition, 1913, no. 1293]</ref>

Moving away from his quasi-monochromatic works of 1910 and 1911, Gleizes employed a wide array of primary colors, grays, earth tones and umbers.

Unlike the preferred subject matter of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque (for example, still lives or guitar players), Gleizes has depicted a vast scene, combining a sporting event with a semi-urban or industrial landscape in the background.

As the principle subject matter of this work Gleizes chose to represent a group of six or seven rugby football players. The action and contact between the players is palpable. Two of the men are holding on to the player with the ball (blue jersey) as if a tackle is imminent. In contrast to the impending violence of the sport, Gleizes has painted flowers along with some cubic shapes toward the bottom right of the picture. On the bottom left is a man, possibly a fallen player, holding what appears to be a round shaped item in his hand. Spectators are seen toward the upper right, while to the left, in the background, Gleizes has painted a town, a bridge and bellowing clouds or smoke.

The rich juxtaposition of divers elements present within the piece are tied together in a Cubist idiom by an interlocking grid of diagonal lines, facets, intersecting plains and spheres.

==Overview== Painted during an ongoing debate over the virtues of Cubism and Futurism, ''Les Joueurs de football'' is a prime example of the artists desire to reconcile the problem of representing the subject from different points of view simultaneously, and/or in successive stages of motion (both the physical displacement of an object and the movement of thought).<ref name=Brooke>Peter Brooke, ''Albert Gleizes – For and Against the Twentieth Century'', New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2001, pp. 29–31, {{ISBN|0-300-08964-3}}, {{ISBN|978-0-3000-8964-6}}</ref> Here, according to art historian Peter Brooke, Gleizes explores the movement of subjects in motion "with the sense of movement that can be excited in the spectator using purely pictorial means". Brooke continues, "The drama can be seen very clearly expressed in Gleizes's painting ''Les Joueurs de football'', in which a very powerful pictorial construction is undermined by the idea of aggressive movement, very rare for Gleizes, conveyed in the frozen gestures of the subject, the football players".<ref name=Brooke />

Guillaume Apollinaire writes in ''Montjoie!'' on 18 March 1913:<ref name=Montjoie /> <blockquote>With his ''Joueurs de football'', Albert Gleizes taken an enormous step. This is his most varied and most colored canvas. I still see in the upper section some unpleasant and heavy smoke, but the composition is new, divers. Gleizes embarked upon a challenging composition that he masterfully arranged. The subject has returned to the painting and I’m not in the least proud to have predicted the return of what constitutes very foundation of pictorial art. This Élan vital constitutes the subject of Gleizes' canvas.

''L’Oiseau bleu'', the large poetic composition by Metzinger is the most important work painted by this much discussed artist. It is difficult to express in a few lines and without prior meditation all the invention, all the marvel [féérie] of this well painted work.

We can no longer say, now, that Cubism is obscure [triste], gala rather, grand [noblesse], measure [mesure] and audacity.</blockquote>

''Les Joueurs de football'' is testament to the close association of two artists, Metzinger and Gleizes, and to their shared social, cultural and philosophical conviction that painting represented more than a fleeting glimpse of the world in which they lived, that indeed by showing multiple facets of a subject captured at successive intervals in time simultaneously, a truer more complete image would emerge.<ref name="Moser, Robbins">Joann Moser, Daniel Robbins, ''Jean Metzinger in retrospect'', 1985, The University of Iowa Museum of Art (J. Paul Getty Trust, University of Washington Press)</ref><br>

<blockquote>We feared the dogmas and hermetic ideas, destructive acts disguised as new constructions, before they appeared as we knew they would. Rejecting nothing, we sketched out a traditional curve in French painting from Courbet to ourselves as the latest arrivals, persuaded that the new order cannot be created independently of the permanent order. (Albert Gleizes, 1917)<ref>''Albert Gleizes: La Peinture Moderne'', in 391, No. 5, New York, June 1917</ref><ref>[http://www.peterbrooke.org.uk/a%26r/othertxts/malevich Two Philosopher-Painters, Albert Gleizes and Kasimir Malevich]</ref></blockquote>

Gleizes' ''Football Players'' exemplifies the principle of mobile perspective and simultaneity elaborated upon in the Cubist manifesto ''Du "Cubisme"'', written with Jean Metzinger. ''Football Players'' exemplifies, too, the general freedom of the artist to interpret the subject matter without producing photograph resemblance or ‘realistic’ portrayal of an object or event. For Metzinger and Gleizes, such a portrayal was simply an arbitrary convention. In the world of experience, things are not static, but in constant motion. Objects are rarely seen from one point of view, and the act of perception is systematically accompanied by a collection of emotions and thoughts. Life is not a 'purely retinal' experience.<ref name=Brooke />

==Rugby football== [[File:Henri Rousseau - The Football Players.jpg|thumb|210px|Henri Rousseau, 1908, ''The Football Players'', oil on canvas, 100.5 × 80.3 cm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum]] The apparition of ''The Football Players'' (1908) in the work of Henri Rousseau signaled the emergence of sporting events as a subject for art.<ref name="Gordon Hughes">[https://books.google.com/books?id=m-qaBQAAQBAJ&q=football&pg=PA70 Gordon Hughes, Resisting Abstraction: Robert Delaunay and Vision in the Face of Modernism, University of Chicago Press, Nov 25, 2014]</ref> Jean Metzinger painted ''At the Cycle-Race Track (Au Vélodrome)'' (1911–12) Peggy Guggenheim Collection; Umberto Boccioni, ''Dynamism of a Cyclist'' (1913), Peggy Guggenheim Collection and ''Dynamism of a Soccer Player'' (1913) Museum of Modern Art. Robert Delaunay worked on a series of rugby football scenes from 1912 to 1913, and again in 1924.<ref>[http://www.kubisme.info/kt515.html Kubisme en sport]</ref> André Lhote, later, painted the subject several times, between 1917 and 1937.<ref name="Gordon Hughes" /><ref>[http://www.photo.rmn.fr/archive/49-000738-2C6NU00488II.html André Lhote, ''Rugby'', 1917, Agence Photographique de la Réunion des musées nationaux et du Grand Palais des Champs-Elysées (RMN)]</ref> In both the Gleizes painting and those of Delaunay, the identification with soccer has commonly been made, however, the ball is oval and the hands are being used; clearly identifying the subject of these works as depictions of rugby football games.<ref name="SRGM 1976">[https://openlibrary.org/books/OL11297020M/Guggenheim_Museum_Collection ''Guggenheim Museum Collection Paintings, 1880–1945'', Published June 1976 by Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation]</ref>

The first rugby competition was held in 1892 as a one-off championship game between two Paris-based teams, the Racing Club de France and Stade Français. In 1900 rugby was played at the Paris Summer Olympics. France won the gold medal of the first ever rugby event at the Olympics. Racing Club made it to the championship final on 31 March 1912. France joined an international competition in 1910, and coined the term Tournoi des Cinq Nations (Five Nations Championship); a term that would last almost the entire century.<ref>[http://www.lnr.fr/omm/upload/File/Dossier%20de%20presse%20rugby.pdf ''Rugbysme: le rugby et l'art moderne'', Musée Fabre de Montpellier Agglomération, 8 September – 28 October 2007] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150202140112/http://www.lnr.fr/omm/upload/File/Dossier%20de%20presse%20rugby.pdf |date=2 February 2015 }}</ref> On 1 January 1913, at the France-Scotland match, spectators threw themselves on the referee to express their dissatisfaction. The mounted police were forced to intervene charging. This violent incident led to the secretary of the Scottish Rugby Union to declare: "If the game can only be played under the protection of the police or the military, it is not worth playing".<ref>Jean-Pierre Bodis, ''Histoire mondiale du rugby'', Bibliothèque historique Privat, 1987, {{ISBN|2-7089-5329-X}}</ref> Following this incidents, Scotland refused to face France at the 1914 tournament.<ref name="The tournament">[http://www.rugby-nomades.qc.ca/info-nomades/histoire_tournament.php ''The tournament'', rugby-nomades.qc.ca] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130520193800/http://www.rugby-nomades.qc.ca/info-nomades/histoire_tournament.php |date=2013-05-20 }}</ref> France was implicitly excluded from further tournaments, but World War I did not permit the application of this exclusion.

The related sport-themed work of Rousseau, Metzinger, Gleizes, Delaunay, Boccioni (and later Lhote), reflected the enthusiasm for sport that fascinated the French spirit at the time. Romain Rolland described the Belle Époque generation as "Passionately in love with pleasure and violent games", in his 1912/13 novel ''Jean-Christophe''.<ref name="Gordon Hughes" /> Art historian Daniel Robbins writes:

<blockquote>The role of team sport, especially in the context of mass audience participation, reflects another interest of the artists of Passy. Jacques Nayral was occasionally a sports writer (cf. ''L’Action Nouvelle'', February 25, 1914) and a fan (as was Delaunay) of foot and bicycle racing. Gleizes' ''Football Players'' dates from the same year as Delaunay’s ''Cardiff Team''.<ref>[https://archive.org/details/albertgleizes1881robb Daniel Robbins, 1964, ''Albert Gleizes 1881–1953, A Retrospective Exhibition''], published by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, in collaboration with Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund, n. 40, p. 31</ref></blockquote>

==Related works== <gallery widths="160px" heights="180px"> File:Metzinger cycle track.jpg|Jean Metzinger, 1911–12, ''At the Cycle-Race Track (Au Vélodrome)'', oil and sand on canvas, 130.4 x 97.1&nbsp;cm, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice File:Jean Metzinger, 1912-1913, L'Oiseau bleu, (The Blue Bird) oil on canvas, 230 x 196 cm, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris..jpg|Jean Metzinger, 1912-1913, ''L’Oiseau bleu (The Blue Bird)'', oil on canvas, 230 x 196&nbsp;cm, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris File:Robert Delaunay, 1913, L'Équipe de Cardiff, oil on canvas, 326 × 208 cm, Musée d'Art Moderne de la ville de Paris.jpg|Robert Delaunay, 1913, ''L'Équipe de Cardiff'', oil on canvas, 326 × 208&nbsp;cm, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris File:Robert Delaunay L'Équipe de Cardiff 1913 Eindhoven.jpg|Robert Delaunay, 1913, ''L'Équipe de Cardiff'', oil on canvas, 195 x 132&nbsp;cm Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven File:Umberto Boccioni, 1913, Dynamism of a Cyclist (Dinamismo di un ciclista), oil on canvas, 70 x 95 cm, Gianni Mattioli Collection, on long-term loan to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice.jpg|Umberto Boccioni, 1913, ''Dynamism of a Cyclist'' (''Dinamismo di un ciclista''), oil on canvas, 70 x 95&nbsp;cm, Gianni Mattioli Collection, on long-term loan to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice File:WLA moma Umberto Boccioni Dynamism of a Soccer Player 1913.jpg|Umberto Boccioni, 1913, ''Dynamism of a Soccer Player'', oil on canvas, 193.2 x 201&nbsp;cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York File:Fodboldspillere. Sofus header..jpg|Harald Giersing, 1917, oil on compoboard, 149.1 × 122&nbsp;cm, ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum </gallery>

==Inscriptions== Albert Gleizes 1912–13, lower left; center right reverse: 25 nov[e]mbre 191[?]

==Provenance== ''Les Joueurs de football'' was left by the artist at Galeries Dalmau in 1916.<ref name=":0" /> Titled ''Jugadors de Futbol'', the painting was reproduced in the avant-garde Catalan magazine ''L'Amic de les arts'', November 1926. The caption included the inscription ''Collection Joseph Dalmau''.<ref>[http://mdc2.cbuc.cat/cdm/compoundobject/collection/amicarts/id/63/rec/14 L'Amic de les arts, Gaseta de Sitges, Any 1, núm. 8 (nov. 1926), p. 3]</ref>

It was purchased from the Dalmau family between 1953 and 1955 by Stephen Hahn and (The Sidney Janis Gallery), then sold in 1955 to Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, New York. Subsequently the work was sold to the Marlborough-Gerson gallery, New York, and purchased May 1970 by the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.<ref name=":1">[https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.52106.html Albert Gleizes, ''Football Players'', National Gallery of Art]</ref>

The details of the provenance are provided in a letter of 10 February 1970 from Daniel Robbins to J. Carter Brown. (There is a copy of the letters in the National Gallery of Art's curatorial files.)<ref name=":1" />

==See also== * List of works by Albert Gleizes

==Exhibitions== * 1913, 29th Exhibition, Société des Artistes Indépendants, Paris, March–May 1913, no. 1293 * 1913, Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon, Berlin, September–December, no. 147 * 1916, Galeries Dalmau, Barcelona, 29 November – 12 December (no. 31) * 1926, Galeries Dalmau, Barcelona, 16 October – 6 November (no. 7) * 1955, ''New Arrivals From France'', Sidney Janis Gallery, New York * 1964, ''Albert Gleizes 1881–1953: A Retrospective Exhibition'', Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris; Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund, 1964-1965, no. 40 (New York cat.) and no. 18 (Dortmund cat.) * 1969, ''20th Century Art from the Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller Collection'', Museum of Modern Art, New York, unnumbered catalogue * 1970, ''The Cubist Epoch'', Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1970–1971, no. 98, pl. 63 * 1978, ''Aspects of Twentieth-Century Art'', National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1978–1979, no. 14, repro * 1988, ''Stationen der Moderne: Die bedeutenden Kunstausstellungen des 20. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland'', Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, 1988–1989, no. 3/18, repro * 2001, ''Albert Gleizes: El cubismo en majestad'', Museu Picasso, Barcelona; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon, no. 37, repro. * 2002, ''The Avant-Garde in Danish and European Art 1909–19'', Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, 2002–2003, no. 24, repro. * 2008, ''Le Futurisme à Paris: une avant-garde explosive'', Centre Pompidou, Paris; Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome; Tate Modern, London, 2008–2009, no. 59, repro. (shown only in Paris) * 2012, ''Der Sturm – Zentrum der Avantgarde'', Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal, unnumbered catalogue, repro. * 2018–2019, ''Le cubisme'', 17 October 2018 – 25 February 2019, Galerie 1, Centre Pompidou, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris. Kunstmuseum Basel, 31 March – 5 August 2019<ref>[https://www.centrepompidou.fr/cpv/ressource.action?param.idSource=FR_E-ea420e871bb49bc7b3eb28598919c&param.refStatus=nsr ''Le cubisme'', Centre Pompidou, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, 17 October 2018 – 25 February 2019. Kunstmuseum Basel, 31 March – 5 August 2019]</ref>

==Bibliography== * L'Amic de les arts, Gaseta de Sitges, Any 1, núm. 8, November 1926:&nbsp;3. * 1972, Apollinaire, Guillaume. ''Apollinaire on Art: Essays and Reviews 1902–1918''. Edited by Leroy C. Breunig. Translated by Susan Suleiman. New York: Viking Press, 1972: 282, 285, 292, 338. * 1975, ''European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue''. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 154. * 1975, Robbins, Daniel. ''The Formation and Maturity of Albert Gleizes: A Biographical and Critical Study, 1881–1920''. Ph.D. dissertation, New York University. Ann Arbor, 1975: 113–114, 163–164 * 1982, Buckberrough, Sherry A. ''Robert Delaunay: The Discovery of Simultaneity'', Ann Arbor, 1982: 167–171, no. 60 * 1985, ''European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue'', National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 179. * 1998, Varichon, Anne''. Albert Gleizes, Catalogue Raisonné'', 2 tomes, Paris, Somogy éditions d'art/Fondation Albert Gleizes, 1998, no. 404. * 1998, Pinkus, Karen. "Sport." In ''Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography'': ''Themes Depicted in Works of Art''. 2 volumes. Edited by Helene E. Roberts. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1998: 2:856

==References== {{Reflist|30em}}

==External links== * [http://www.fondationgleizes.fr/fr/gleize/page/fondation/-/fondation Fondation Albert Gleizes] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181029104606/http://www.fondationgleizes.fr/fr/gleize/page/fondation/-/fondation |date=2018-10-29 }} * [http://www.photo.rmn.fr/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2CO5PCE96XN7&SMLS=1&RW=1085&RH=643 Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Grand Palais, Agence photographique]

{{Albert Gleizes|state=expanded}} {{Cubism}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Football Players}} Category:Paintings by Albert Gleizes Category:Cubist paintings Category:1912 paintings Category:1913 paintings Category:Paintings in the National Gallery of Art Category:Sports paintings Category:Rugby football in art Category:Oil paintings on canvas