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Lot Essay
To be sold with a photo-certificate from the Wildenstein Institute dated Paris, le 12 juin 1996.
This work will be included in the forthcoming Maurice de Vlaminck catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute, Paris.
Unlike Matisse, Derain or Braque, Vlaminck rarely travelled away from his countryside home to explore the painterly possibilities offered by other environments. Painting for Vlaminck was intrinsically a natural product of the interaction between man and the landscape in which he lived. Inspired by Van Gogh's example, Vlaminck attempted to respond to the elemental relationship between man and nature by employing a heightened emotional response to his natural environment through the use of intense colour.
"I knew neither jealousy nor hate," Vlaminck commented on his state of mind while painting, "but was possessed by rage to recreate a new world, the world in which my eyes perceived, a world all to myself. I was poor but I knew that life is beautiful and I had no other ambition than to discover with the help of new means those deep inner ties that linked me to the very soil." (Vlaminck quoted in: Exh. cat., New York, Perls Galleries, Vlaminck: His Fauve Period, 1968, p. 2)
Executed circa 1907, Les Champs, Reuil is a carefully chosen fusion of vibrantly coloured brushstrokes that depict the fields around Vlaminck's home town of Reuil, near the Parisian suburb of Chatou. Paying attention to the effect of each heavily laden and opaque mark, Vlaminck builds the composition of this picture into a solid whole purely through the deliberate use of contrasting sweeps of colour. There are no greying or hazy shadows in Vlaminck's vision, only an endless and exciting play of brilliant colour. Lovingly recreating the natural forms of his native landscape, Vlaminck almost completely disregards the naturalistic colouring of the scene by heightening the tone of his palette.
This work will be included in the forthcoming Maurice de Vlaminck catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute, Paris.
Unlike Matisse, Derain or Braque, Vlaminck rarely travelled away from his countryside home to explore the painterly possibilities offered by other environments. Painting for Vlaminck was intrinsically a natural product of the interaction between man and the landscape in which he lived. Inspired by Van Gogh's example, Vlaminck attempted to respond to the elemental relationship between man and nature by employing a heightened emotional response to his natural environment through the use of intense colour.
"I knew neither jealousy nor hate," Vlaminck commented on his state of mind while painting, "but was possessed by rage to recreate a new world, the world in which my eyes perceived, a world all to myself. I was poor but I knew that life is beautiful and I had no other ambition than to discover with the help of new means those deep inner ties that linked me to the very soil." (Vlaminck quoted in: Exh. cat., New York, Perls Galleries, Vlaminck: His Fauve Period, 1968, p. 2)
Executed circa 1907, Les Champs, Reuil is a carefully chosen fusion of vibrantly coloured brushstrokes that depict the fields around Vlaminck's home town of Reuil, near the Parisian suburb of Chatou. Paying attention to the effect of each heavily laden and opaque mark, Vlaminck builds the composition of this picture into a solid whole purely through the deliberate use of contrasting sweeps of colour. There are no greying or hazy shadows in Vlaminck's vision, only an endless and exciting play of brilliant colour. Lovingly recreating the natural forms of his native landscape, Vlaminck almost completely disregards the naturalistic colouring of the scene by heightening the tone of his palette.