La Noce 1910 - 1911

Fernand Léger made ‘La Noce’, or 'The Wedding', with oil on canvas, but when is anybody's guess! This is a painting where process and colour are very much at the forefront; you see the artist making choices, changing their mind, leaving clues to the creative journey right there on the surface. The palette is mostly greys and blacks, but with pinks that peek through from underneath like an underpainting. The paint handling varies. In places it is thick, opaque, with the marks of the brush still visible, and in other areas it is thin and transparent. Take a look at the area in the lower left, you can see the brushstrokes have been built up, layered, to make jagged, angular forms. Léger, like the Cubists, was interested in the way that forms can be fractured and rebuilt on the canvas. Like Picasso and Braque, Léger’s work shows how art is an ongoing conversation.