Fernand LÉGER (1881 - 1955) Study for The Divers Gouache, pen and India ink. Signed at foot. Annotated "Étude pour les plongeurs". (Creases, discoloration along the edges and restorations). 56 x 48 cm Provenance: Former Maurice Gobin collection, then by descent. A certificate from the Comité Fernand Léger can be provided on request and at the purchaser's expense. Many of Fernand Léger's studies from 1940-1945 revolve around the theme of divers. The artist recounts how he conceived the idea: "In 1940, I was working on my Plongeurs à Marseille, five or six people diving. I went to the United States and went into a swimming pool one day. The divers were no longer five or six, but two hundred at a time. Recognize yourself! Whose head? Whose leg? Whose arms? I didn't know. So I made the limbs scattered throughout my painting. In doing so, I think I'm much truer than Michelangelo when he studies the details of the muscles of each limb. I've seen the figures he painted in the Sistine Chapel: they don't fall off, they hang in every corner of the building. You can see their toenails. I can assure you that when the boys from Marseille rushed into the water, I didn't have time to see the details, and my divers, they fall". Most of the diver studies were carried out during Léger's exile in the United States, while France was occupied. This study is striking for its vertical diamond-shaped format, no doubt research for a possible decor. Its black background makes it similar to Grands plongeurs noirs, an oil on canvas painted in 1944 and now conserved at the Centre Georges Pompidou.