Among the first Americans to espouse novel European modernist approaches to painting, Alfred Maurer was directly informed by his exposure to avant-garde circles in Paris. Painted during the period the artist lived and worked in France, The Iron Table abounds with Fauvist technique in its bold, non-naturalistic colors applied in loose dabs of paint. Merging still life and landscape, Maurer simplified elements of the forms and subjects leading to an abstracted composition. 

The Iron Table boasts a remarkable provenance, first owned by John Quinn, the distinguished New York lawyer and revered art collector. Known as "The Noble Buyer," Quinn was a pivotal figure in promoting French modern art and introducing modernism to America. The painting remained within Quinn's family for generations and was showcased in the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden's 1978 exhibition "The Noble Buyer”: John Quinn, Patron of the Avant-Garde, highlighting its historical and artistic significance. Quinn acquired The Iron Table after seeing it in a Beaux Arts Gallery exhibition organized by Rockwell Kent. Despite critical disfavor, Quinn was captivated by the painting's vibrant Fauve-like colors and abstract forms. He praised Maurer’s work, stating, “Maurer was a young American artist who is now in Paris and is painting in an entirely different key from what he used to … a high, bright key. In fact I think artists are beginning to learn … that their pictures should not look as though they were painted in a coal cellar or in a prison cell…”[1].

[1] John Quinn in a letter to Augustus John dated May 19, 1911, quoted in Judith Zilczer, “The Noble Buyer”: John Quinn, Patron of the Avant-Garde, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1978, p. 22.