Bords de la Marne and other painting by Gleizes during this phase are close to the work of Henri Le Fauconnier, though the artist did not know each other at the time.

[1] Gleizes and the former members of the Abbaye de Créteil (notably Jules Romains, Henri-Martin Barzun and René Arcos) dreamed of a synthetic concept of the possibilities of the future, one of "collectivity, multiplicity and simultaneity" writes art historian Daniel Robbins: "Their vision invariably encompassed broad subjects which, although dealing with reality, were restricted neither by the limitations of physical perception nor by a separation of scientific fact from intellectual meaning—even symbolic meaning.

[1] Before 1911 a group of artists formed through the Mercereau connection, including Allard, Barzun, Beauduin, Castiaux, Jouve, Divoire, Parmentier, Marinetti, Brâncuși, Varlet, Apollinaire and Salmon.

[4][5][6] In his preface to the 1911 Brussels Indépendants, Apollinaire wrote: ...thus has come a simple and noble art, expressive and measured, eager to discover beauty, and entirely ready to tackle those vast subjects which the painters of yesterday did not dare to undertake, abandoning them to the presumptuous, old-fashioned and boring daubers of the official Salons.Unlike the style and subject matter of Picasso and Braque, the paintings of Albert Gleizes, Le Fauconnier, Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger and others of the Mercereau group favored vast scenes (epic themes) representing modern life.

[1] Allard wrote of Gleizes, Le Fauconnier and Metzinger, in a review of the 1910 Salon d'Automne: Thus is born at the antipodes of impressionism an art which cares little to imitate the occasional cosmic episode, but which offers to the intelligence of the spectator the essential elements of a synthesis in time, in all its pictorial fullness.