Chaim Soutine (1894-1943)
Chaim Soutine (1894-1943)

Paysage du Midi

Details
Chaim Soutine (1894-1943)
Paysage du Midi
signed 'C. Soutine' (lower right)
oil on canvas
25 x 32 in. (65.3 x 81.2 cm.)
Painted near Cagnes circa 1918
Provenance
Anon. sale, Galerie Georges Moos, Geneva, 5 November 1949, lot 126.
Galerie Katia Granoff, Paris.
Galerie Gattlen, Lausanne (no. 2322).
Perls Galleries, New York.
Anon. sale, Sotheby's New York, 18 May 1990, lot 348.
Literature
P. Courthion, Soutine: peintre du dchirant, Lausanne, 1972, p. 60 and 188 (illustrated).
M. Tuchmann, E. Dunow and K. Perls, Chaim Soutine (1893-1943): Catalogue Raisonn, Werkverzeichnis, vol. I, Cologne, 1993, no. 21 (illustrated in colour, p. 132).
Exhibited
Lausanne, Galerie Gattlen, Monet Picasso, June-July 1963, no. 26.

Lot Essay

'Sometime in 1918 Soutine left Paris, probably for the first time since he had arrived in France, to visit Cagnes. The following year he visited Cret in the Pyrenees, where he later settled in 1919 for about three years. Away from the museums and galleries of Paris - and it must always be rembered how deeply responsive Soutine was to his visual environment - Soutine took great strides forward...During the Cret period Soutine, in his utter reliance on spontaneous execution, with its leaning towards the abstract, most fully embodied the expressionist vision' (M. Tuchmann et al, op. cit., pp. 19-20).
Discussing the present picture, Pierre Courthion has written: 'On peut imaginer ici le choc que dut ressentir Soutine en abordant la pleine lumire du Midi. C'est l un paysage que je situe topographiquement entre le monte vers Cagnes, gauche, et la route, de l'autre ct du vallon, qui monte vers la Gaude et Saint-Jeannet. C'est une ouevre lumineuse dans laquelle on croirait entendre le tambourin des cigales, tellement elle est ensoleille. Ainsi qu'il le fera souvent, Soutine joint son paysage la prsence de personnages bauchs qui sont comme un dessin d'enfant au milieu de cette splendide affirmation de chaleur ocre et crulenne. Dans toute la peinture de Soutine, je ne connais pas de paysage plus vibrant et plus chaud' (loc. cit.).

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