Nu à la cheminée

Nu à la cheminée, also referred to as Nu dans un intérieur, Femme nu, and Nu or Nude, is a painting by Jean Metzinger. The work was exhibited in Paris at the Salon d'Automne of 1910, and the Salon de la Section d'Or, Galerie La Boétie in Paris, October 1912. It was published in Du "Cubisme", written by Jean Metzinger and Albert Gleizes in 1912, and subsequently published in The Cubist Painters, Aesthetic Meditations (Les Peintres Cubistes) by Guillaume Apollinaire, 1913. By 1912 Nu à la cheminée was in the collection of M.G. Comerre (the mother of Albert Gleizes, and sister of Léon Comerre, the academic/Symbolist painter who won the Gand Prix de Rome in 1875). The work has not been seen in public since, its current location is unknown.

Nu à la cheminée provoked considerable scandal upon its presentation at the Salon d’Automne and remains a focal point of scholarly debate. Its notoriety stemmed not merely from its audacity, but from its distinction as the first unequivocally Cubist canvas to be exhibited in a major public salon. Visitors were confronted with a radically new pictorial language—what Metzinger himself termed "mobile perspective"—that challenged conventional modes of visual representation. The painting’s controversy was compounded by its striking formal affinity with the works of Picasso and Braque, who, bound to Kahnweiler's exclusive gallery circle, were notably absent from the exhibition. In this context, Metzinger's work signaled a turning point: the public unveiling of Cubism as a revolutionary aesthetic force, no longer confined to the margins of artist studios or private galleries but projected onto the grand stage of the Grand Palais.