The term 'Cubism' was employed for the first time in June 1911 by Guillaume Apollinaire, speaking in the context of the Indépendants exhibition in Brussels which included this work by Gleizes, along with others by Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger, and Henri Le Fauconnier.

In his Cubism in the Shadow of War: The Avant-Garde and Politics in Paris, 1905-1914, art historian David Cottington writes of Paysage à Meudon:[5]The classical armature and Claudian image of Gleizes' picture are both overlaid with a pattern of planes and facets that fragments forms, combines perspectives and complicates the relation between spaces and volumes, but does little to disrupt the conventional spatial recession.Just as in the works of Metzinger, and unlike those of Pablo Picasso or Georges Braque of the same period, Gleizes had no interest in the flattening of the entire surface, of fusing background and foreground to the point where all spatial depth of field was abandoned.

Gleizes made use of fragmentation of form, multiple perspective views (i.e., mobile and dynamic, rather than static and from one point-of-view) along with linear and planar structural qualities.

Visibly distant from the work of Picasso or Braque, Paysage à Meudon is stylistically much closer to Metzinger, Le Fauconnier, Léger and Delaunay.

There is a logical diminution of form, and in this respect Gleizes' Cubism retained his singular vision of imposing a sense of weight and volumetric relationships to his subjects.

In their Lot Notes for the 2010 sale, Christie's writes:[9]Le Chemin (Meudon) is a large and important painting made by Albert Gleizes in the summer of 1911[a] at the height of his new friendship and collaboration with fellow Cubist Jean Metzinger.

One of his largest and most ambitious paintings from this period, made in direct response to the inspiration of Metzinger, it was exhibited by Gleizes at the groundbreaking exhibition of the so-called 'Salon Cubists', Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger, Henri Le Fauconnier and Gleizes, at the Salon des Indépendants in June 1911.With its prismatic Cubism, shifting multiple perspective points and its holistic integration of landscape and figure centred around this lone figures journey through a path in the woods and through the heart of the picture, this work represents a radical extension of Gleizes' Cubism into an entirely new integrated and simultaneous style of composition.Alphonse Kann had been admired for his extraordinary taste and keen eye.

On 11 July 1997 the Musée National d'Art Moderne returned Gleizes' Paysage à Meudon, stolen by Nazi occupiers during the Second World War, to the heirs of the art collector Alphonse Kann.

Francois Warin learned of the Gleizes painting from a book written in 1997 by the journalist Hector Feliciano, The Lost Museum, which traces the fate of many works confiscated by the Nazis.

Feliciano said that after plundering the painting, the Nazis brought it to the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris where confiscated artworks were deposited.

[11] France's Cour des Comptes, a state spending 'watchdog' charged with conducting financial and legislative audits of public and private institutions, accused the museums of failing in their legal duty to seek out the owners or heirs of the works, including paintings by Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne and sculptures by Auguste Rodin.

The state-museum network explained that few or none of the works in its possession were looted from Jews, but were sold to the Nazis by collaborationist dealers in the wartime Parisian art market.