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Lot Essay
André Masson arrived in New York in June, 1941 with his wife and two sons. He lived in New Preston, Connecticut until he returned to France in October, 1945.
'My idea of America, like that of so many French, was, and perhaps still is, rooted in Chateaubriand. Nature: the might of nature--the savagery of nature--the feeling that nature may one day recover its strength and turn all back to chaos.
Here I keep imagining a virgin forest about me. This has had its psychological influence on my painting in America. There has been no influence of the cities. What characterizes my American work is rather its manner of expressing this feeling for nature. Such pictures as Printemps Indien, Paysage Iroquois, Le Grande Melle, Les Gens de Mais, Meditation sur une Feuille de Chêne, embody a correspondence --express something which could never have been painted in Europe. Nocturnal aspects, aspects of revery; savage aspects--Emblematic Landscapes of my life in the countryside of the United States. None of them could have been painted in Ile de France--the wickedness, the violence of nature--the hurricane, the tempest, the fury of the storms.
All this is evidently a romantic's position. Of course I exaggerate the ferocity of the climate. But this feature attracted me. I felt I could most effectively cultivate it in my new environment.' (A.Masson, in "Eleven Europeans in America," The Museum of Modern Art Bulletin, New York, 1946, vol. XIII, nos. 4-5, p. 3).
'My idea of America, like that of so many French, was, and perhaps still is, rooted in Chateaubriand. Nature: the might of nature--the savagery of nature--the feeling that nature may one day recover its strength and turn all back to chaos.
Here I keep imagining a virgin forest about me. This has had its psychological influence on my painting in America. There has been no influence of the cities. What characterizes my American work is rather its manner of expressing this feeling for nature. Such pictures as Printemps Indien, Paysage Iroquois, Le Grande Melle, Les Gens de Mais, Meditation sur une Feuille de Chêne, embody a correspondence --express something which could never have been painted in Europe. Nocturnal aspects, aspects of revery; savage aspects--Emblematic Landscapes of my life in the countryside of the United States. None of them could have been painted in Ile de France--the wickedness, the violence of nature--the hurricane, the tempest, the fury of the storms.
All this is evidently a romantic's position. Of course I exaggerate the ferocity of the climate. But this feature attracted me. I felt I could most effectively cultivate it in my new environment.' (A.Masson, in "Eleven Europeans in America," The Museum of Modern Art Bulletin, New York, 1946, vol. XIII, nos. 4-5, p. 3).