Max Weber
1881-1961

Born in 1881 in the western Russian (now Polish) town of Bialystok, Max Weber came to the United States with his family in 1901. Settling in Brooklyn, his father struggled to earn a living and Weber grew up in relative poverty. He initially studied art at the Pratt Institute under Arthur Wesley Dow, with whom he learned to see forms as visual relationships rather than just objects. In 1905 he traveled to Paris to study at both the Académies Julian and Colarossi, and then arranged a one-year tutorial with Henri Matisse. Through the salon gatherings of Gertrude and Leo Stein, he made the acquaintance of many key European Modernists; in particular, Weber enjoyed a close friendship with Henri Rousseau. By the time he left Paris in 1909, forced to
return to the United States by financial pressures, the artist was imbued with the revolutionary spirits of Cézanne, Matisse and Picasso.

Weber’s incorporation of these modernist tendencies was already underway by 1906, as evidenced by La Chanteuse, Paris. Sparse in form, the drawing reveals the artist’s experimentation with a Matisse-like emphasis on pictorial linearity and figural distortion. From the Rue de la Gaieté series, the drawing is one of a number by the artist depicting theatrical players as well as members of the audience. A street in the Montparnasse quarter, the Rue de la Gaieté acquired its name as a result of its history. Meaning the “street of gaiety,” it was known at the turn of the century for its variety theatres and lively restaurants.