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When Juan Gris first became known as a painter in the Salon des Indépendents in 1912 his work was already expressed in a fully Cubist style and possesed that intellectual element which marked all his artistic production.
The Smoker, number 51 in Douglas Cooper's catalogue raisonné (1977), was painted in Céret in September 1913. The way in which the head is broken up and deconstructed into its different parts in the form of a fan, conforming to a geometric order, is a response, as Christopher Green has noted (1995) to the direct influence of Picasso's latest works, in particular his Heads which were also painted in Céret in the spring of 1913. Picasso and Braque's Cubism had at that point taken on a new and more synthetic and conceptual direction and their compositions, which had begun to involve paper collé, had become simpler and flatter. Juan Gris was in Céret in the French Pyrenees-the "Mecca of Cubism," as Kahnweiler called it-from the beginning of August to the end of October and thus coincided for a few days with Pablo Picasso, his fellow Spaniard and neighbour in the Bateau Lavoir. Gris referred to him as "maestro."
Following a preparatory drawing for The Smoker (Jacques and Natasha Gelmann Collection) which bears the dedication "A mon cher ami Frank Haviland. Bien afectueusement. Juan Gris," it has been suggested that the present painting is a portrait of Frank Haviland, a rich American and friend of Leo and Gertrude Stein, who had just restored a monastery in Céret where he kept his significant collection of African art. Haviland, a descendent of David Haviland who founded a porcelain factory in Limoges in the nineteenth century, was also a major patron of the young artists in Paris and had also done some painting himself using the name Frank Burty. In the drawing, which was of almost the same format as the oil, Gris established the basic lines of the composition. Both the drawing and the oil include a series of elements which characterise the sitter, such as the hard collar of the shirt, the bow tie and the top hat; the same clothes which Haviland is wearing in a photograph which Picasso took of him in his studio in Paris in 1910.
The dominant oblique of the upper part, which recalls Picasso's Heads, contrasts with the solidity and frontality of the lower part in which the shoulders and the neck give the composition real stability. To create depth Gris presents the figure from different viewpoints, which make some parts of him difficult to recognise. The discordant note in this studied geometrical order is created by the sinuous line of cigarette smoke which changes colour in the different parts of the composition. In addition, the schematic references to the nose, the ear and the chin which are close to caricature, have a certain similarity with Picasso's Heads, but also remind us of Gris's beginnings as an illustrator. However, what distinguishes Gris's work from that of Picasso is without doubt the inclusion of colour. The planes of greens, blues, oranges and reds are not found in Picasso and Braque's paintings of that time and give Gris's work a particular originality.
Paloma Alarcó
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