Les Musiciens, souvenir de Sidney Bechet

Nicolas de Staël made this painting after hearing the jazz clarinetist and saxophonist Sidney Bechet at a club in Montparnasse, Paris. It is the first of two closely related paintings on the same theme. Staël's dealer Paul Rosenberg admired the first version so strongly that he persuaded the artist to make a second, now at the Phillips Collection. Born in Russia, Staël studied art in Brussels after his family fled the Russian Revolution and later settled in France. By 1952, he was moving toward brighter color and subjects drawn more directly from the visible world. Music was a lasting source of inspiration for him, and he regularly attended concerts and listened while painting. This work belongs to a brief, intensely productive final period before his death in 1955.