Robert Delaunay was born in Paris in 1885, a few years after Braque and Picasso. He was a big blond bright-eyed man, the son of a well-off engineer and so he was not afflicted by the poverty that befell most of his fellow artists. After training as a decorative commercial painter he took up an artistic career in 1904. About 1906 he became interested in Neo-Impressionism and the color theories of Eugene Cheuvrel and embarked upon the research into the aesthetic applications of color which remained the central motive throughout his artistic life. He gave all of his time to painting.

Delaunay was lucky in his marriage, too. He met Russian-born Sonia Terk in 1909 and they were married in 1910. She was ...