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Lot Essay
To be included in the forthcoming supplement to the Chaim Soutine catalogue raisonné being prepared by Maurice Tuchman and Esti Dunow.
Between 1927 and 1929, Soutine painted many portraits of the household and workers he encountered in the hotels he visited for medical cures (see illustration). Obsessed by figures in uniform, the rather old-fashioned dress-code still used in and around the French hotel trade in the 1920s held a particular appeal for him. As Monroe Wheeler wrote in the catalogue for the Soutine exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1950: "What a good thing for Soutine that so many uniforms are still worn by the minor trades people in France. It allows him to express the compassion that fills his heart and which is far more magnificent than the poverty of today's world."
Between 1927 and 1929, Soutine painted many portraits of the household and workers he encountered in the hotels he visited for medical cures (see illustration). Obsessed by figures in uniform, the rather old-fashioned dress-code still used in and around the French hotel trade in the 1920s held a particular appeal for him. As Monroe Wheeler wrote in the catalogue for the Soutine exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1950: "What a good thing for Soutine that so many uniforms are still worn by the minor trades people in France. It allows him to express the compassion that fills his heart and which is far more magnificent than the poverty of today's world."