Bateaux au Havre

Details

Raoul Dufy (1877-1953)
Bateaux au Havre
signed 'Raoul Dufy' (lower right)
oil on canvas
21¼ x 25 5/8 in. (54 x 65 cm.)
Painted in 1922

Provenance

Perls Galleries, New York.
Acquired from the above by the present owners on 2 February 1979.

Literature

M. Lafaille, Raoul Dufy, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, vol. II, Geneva, 1972, no. 674 (illustrated p. 215).

Exhibited

London, Hayward Gallery, Raoul Dufy 1877-1953, Nov. 1983-Feb. 1984, no. 51.
Martigny, Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Raoul Dufy - Séries et séries noires, Jan.-June 1997, no. 60 (illustrated in colour in the catalogue).

Special notice

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Lot Essay

Bateaux au Havre is not a topographical seascape, but an invention of Dufy's. In his introduction to the Art's Council Dufy exhibition in 1983, which included Bateaux au Havre, Bryan Robertson tells us that; 'Dufy invented a cultivated and lovingly tended paradise in the ancient Persian sense of an enclosed and protected garden.' Dufy considered truth to appearance to be of minor importance. Over time he developed a universe of emblems used as a kind of language to describe what was around him. Various elements of his personal artistic vocabulary are recognisable in the present work such as the swimmer, the sailing boat and the butterflies.

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