Fields of Flowers in Bloom, near Caen

Jean Metzinger studied academic painting in Nantes, France, before moving to Paris in 1904. He had, by then, adopted the Neo-Impressionist, pointillist style of painting similar to that promoted by George Seurat and Paul Signac, and most evident in this painting of the same year. In 1910, he joined a group of artists that included Albert Gleizes, Fernand Léger and Robert Delaunay and with them launched the Cubist movement. After World War I, Metzinger abandoned Cubism for a more representational form of figure painting, similar to the later work of Léger.