Max Weber: An American Cubist in Paris and London 1905-15

Max Weber is credited with introducing Cubism to the USA with works inspired by what he had learnt in Paris in the early 1900s. He is of particular interest to Jewish audiences as from 1919 onwards, he did a number of paintings of Williamsburg's Chasidic community. But sadly, the Ben Uri exhibition focuses on his early years, before he became interested in Jewish subjects.

Weber's work has only been represented in one UK public collection, at the University of Reading, which has loaned all 14 of its Weber works to the exhibition. A few of the paintings are really outstanding. The first shows students painting in Matisse's studio under the great master's tutelage. Weber's depiction of the plaster cast they are copying shows how much he has learnt from Matisse's bright and highly unrealistic use of colour, the light and shade depicted in glowing tones of purple and turquoise. Also on show is a charming pencil sketch of Matisse which shows he was almost as gifted with line as his better-known master.

Back in New York, Weber used Cubism to capture the modernity of the city. His painting of the Big Apple is all soaring skyscrapers whose rectangular silhouettes contrast with the rounded, more natural forms of trees and clouds.

The problem is that the rest of the works suggest only that he was a minor follower of Cezanne and Picasso and fail to reveal how innovative an artist Weber could be. This is not helped by the fact that the exhibition has been bulked out by including works in a similar style by members of London's Bloomsbury Group, whose art was shown alongside Weber's in a 1913 London exhibition.