La Fresnaye, Roger de

La Fresnaye, Roger de (b Le Mans, 11 July 1885; d Grasse, 27 Nov. 1925).
French painter. In 1912–14 he was a member of the Section d'Or group, and his work shows an individual response to Cubism; his paintings were more naturalistic than those of Braque and Picasso, but he adopted something of their method of analysing forms into planes. The effect in La Fresnaye's work, however, is more decorative than structural, and his prismatic colours reflect the influence of Delaunay, as in his most famous and personal work, The Conquest of the Air (1913, MoMA, New York), in which he portrays himself and his brother in an exhilaratingly airy setting with a balloon ascending in the background. La Fresnaye's health was ruined during his service in the army during the First World War and he never again had the energy for sustained work. In his later paintings he abandoned Cubist spatial analysis for a more linear style.