Although the credit for the invention of Cubism belongs unequivocally to Picasso and Braque, it was Jean Metzinger who, more than any other painter, took the initiative to found a school of Cubist painting and to codify its ideas in writing. In 1911, he brought together a group of like-minded artists - Delaunay, Léger, Gleizes, Le Fauconnier and himself - to exhibit together at the Salon des Indépendants, thereby officially launching the Cubist movement in Paris; the following year, he was behind the Section d'Or exhibition at the Galerie La Boétie, the most comprehensive display of Cubism before the war. Metzinger was also the co-author, with Gleizes, of Du Cubisme (1912), which articulated for the first time a complete philosophical basis for this radically new pictorial language.

The present work is a substantial still-life composition, beautifully balanced between blocks of vivid colour and clearly defined dark outlines and recesses. The precise delineation of contours and the volumetric shading of the rounded forms describe each object, carving out dramatic profiles with darker shadows on the left and brighter colours on the right. Such descriptive devices are emblematic of this period in Metzinger's work, which gradually moves away from his late Cubist phase towards his purist aesthetic, which would become more prominent from 1923 onward. The work was formerly part of the stock of the Galerie de L'Effort Moderne, whose manager was none other than Léonce Rosenberg. A fervent advocate of Cubism, Rosenberg was one of the leading protagonists of the Parisian art world during the war years. He devised a number of strategies to defend, promote and market the movement to an international audience. Throughout the war, he signed contracts with numerous Cubist artists, including Braque, Léger, Metzinger and others, allowing them to sustain their respective practices and produce exceptional works in the years that followed, such as the present painting.