After a short Cubist period, André Masson (1896-1987) was deeply influenced by the Surrealists, though in 1929 he claimed he was a Surrealist “dissident”. The Spanish Civil War channelled the natural violence of his compositions into a tragic Expressionism. In America in the Forties, he inspired the early practitioners of Action Painting. Then he returned to Provence, designing sets and costumes for Hamlet and Tête d’Or, both for theatres in Paris. In 1966, he was commissioned to paint the ceiling of the Théâtre de L’Odéon.

For the 1957 Mouton Rothschild label, Masson has created a hymn in praise of contented drunkenness, where the figure of the slumbering drinker is intertwined with branches of the vine.