The Cellist

Max Weber painted this small canvas the year after his marriage, and some scholars have attributed the quiet, decorative sensibility of this and other of his works to the calming influence of domestic life. In this Cubist rendering of a cellist, the figure's closed eyes hint at the ecstasies of making music. The shadowy profile of a woman's head that helps to define the musician's torso and merges with the cello may rely on a traditional iconography in which the curved shapes of the instrument were metaphors for the female form.