Artist: Juan Gris (Spanish, 1887 - 1927). Title: "Verre, damier, et bouteille de marc". Medium: Pencil drawing on paper. Date: Composed c1912. Dimensions: Overall size: 9 3/8 x 7 1/4 in. (238 x 184 mm). Lot Note(s): Signed in pencil, upper left recto; annotations verso: collector attribution and title in pencil; collector's ink stamp. Drawn on light cream wove paper. Condition: very good with no serious condition issues; a few minor spots outside of the image, center right recto; some darkening of the edges; remains of newspaper (?) upper center edge, verso; minor soiling verso; presents very well. Provenance: If you have a genuine interest in bidding on this work kindly send an email to: provenance@stanfordauctioneers.com for provenance information and additional image(s). Comment(s): The best comparable we could find to this exquisite drawing is a sale 15 years ago of “Verre, Pipe, et Journal,” pencil on paper, 10 7/8" x 14 1/4," 1916, sold for $228,000 including premium at Sotheby's New York, 11/08/2006, lot #374. Jose Victoriano (Carmelo Carlos) Gonzalez-Perez, better known as Juan Gris, was a Spanish painter and sculptor who lived and worked in France most of his life. His works, which are closely connected to the emergence of an innovative artistic genre—Cubism—are among the movement's most distinctive. Although Gris regarded Picasso as a teacher, Gertrude Stein wrote in ‘The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas’ that "Juan Gris was the only person [artist] whom Picasso wished away.” Gris was one of the most important, accomplished, and enduring adherents of Cubism, developing an original application of the aesthetic which he maintained for seventeen years. Paz García Ponce de León explains, “Juan Gris is the master of synthetic Cubism, standing well above masters such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. He is now considered ‘the quintessential cubist,’ or, as the sculptor Lipchitz said, simply ‘the cubist’” (Paz García Ponce de León, Juan Gris: La Pasión por el Cubismo, Madrid, 2008, p. 193) (courtesy Sotheby’s New York). He died of kidney failure in Paris in 1927 at the age of 40. [30216-1-60000]