Schoelkopf Gallery is the exclusive worldwide representative of the Max Weber Foundation.

The Brass Candlestick is a rare early gouache and goldleaf collage on paper that exemplifies Max Weber’s lifelong still life practice. From 1905 to 1908, Weber lived and worked in Paris, where leading figures of the avant-garde were developing radical new modes of visual expression. Weber was particularly deeply influenced by Paul Cézanne, the French Post-Impressionist master revered for his still life practice, from whom Weber learned to distort the spatial perspective of his own still lifes. Weber returned to the still life genre throughout his career and cultivated a discerning eye for objects of significance in his environment: “Culture will come only when every man will know how to address himself to the inanimate simple things of life,” Weber claimed. “A pot, a cup, a piece of calico, a chair, a mantle, a frame, the binding of a book, the trimming of a dress…these we live with. Culture will come when people touch things with love and see them with a penetrating eye” (Max Weber, Essays on Art, New York: William Edwin Rudge, 1916, 32). In the present work, Weber elevated the candlestick to a position of significance in a setting reminiscent of an altar. In 1914, when The Brass Candlestick was executed, Weber primarily worked in gouache, watercolor, and pastel. This work is exceptional for its use of goldleaf collage. Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque had begun experimenting with collage in 1912 while they were developing Cubism, and Weber was one of the first American artists to work in the medium.