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Lot Essay
'For an artist like Soutine, who depended so completely on direct observation from nature, still life offered the chance to consciously choose and control the situation in nature before he painted it. The actual choice of the motif becomes less dependent on circumstance and more deliberate. He can move things around, set the objects in relation to each other... The fact that he chooses and sets up still life objects contributes to the emotional charge the act of painting the still life will finally convey. The very choice and placement of the objects involve him in a more personal interaction with them' (M. Tuchman et al, op. cit., p. 339).
Painted circa 1918, La cruche aux roses dates from around the time that Soutine first visited Cagnes-sur-Mer, where he was later to settle for several years. The artist probably made the trip at the suggestion of his friend and dealer Léopold Zborowski, and it was the first time he had left Paris since his arrival in 1913. This journey through the French countryside had had an immediate effect on Soutine's sense of colour and space and his paintings from this time display a turbulence and dynamism that foreshadows his boldest and most exciting works from the early 1920s. The intense red and imposing diagonal of the draped background point to the sense of claustrophobia and containment so intrinsic to much of Soutine's art, while the swirling greens of the foliage contrast powerfully with the strong reds and serve to highlight the heads of the flowers against the vibrant background.
Painted circa 1918, La cruche aux roses dates from around the time that Soutine first visited Cagnes-sur-Mer, where he was later to settle for several years. The artist probably made the trip at the suggestion of his friend and dealer Léopold Zborowski, and it was the first time he had left Paris since his arrival in 1913. This journey through the French countryside had had an immediate effect on Soutine's sense of colour and space and his paintings from this time display a turbulence and dynamism that foreshadows his boldest and most exciting works from the early 1920s. The intense red and imposing diagonal of the draped background point to the sense of claustrophobia and containment so intrinsic to much of Soutine's art, while the swirling greens of the foliage contrast powerfully with the strong reds and serve to highlight the heads of the flowers against the vibrant background.