Born the same year as Picasso, Max Weber was in Europe showing his work with the leaders of the avant garde when Cubism was conceived. Upon his return to the United States in 1909, he became one of modernism’s greatest proponents, developing a distinctly Cubist but decidedly individual style of abstraction that fit his own interests. Critics did not welcome Weber’s new approach, mostly because they did not understand it. Artists, on the other hand, found his work as both a painter and a writer intellectually stimulating and inspirational. This work, a pastel rendering of several figures, clearly demonstrates Weber’s Cubist style, undoubtedly influenced as much by Matisse and Cézanne as by Picasso.