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Lot Essay
Maithe Valles-Bled and Godelieve de Vlaminck will include this painting in their forthcoming Vlaminck catalogue raisonné being prepared under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Institute.
Omnipresent throughout the various stages in Vlaminck's artistic career, acting as a sort of pictorial idée fixe, is his home town of Chatou and, in particular, its bridge. 'In art and in life this bridge had very particular associations for Vlaminck. It was not just a point from which he could reconnoiter his painting territory. The bridge was as vital to him as it was to Chatou itself. He later recalled his tutelage by the naïve painter "Monsieur Henri Rigal of Chatou," whom Vlaminck visited every day at "his favourite haunt under the bridge"...A contemporary critic, evidently recognising the bridge's importance to Vlaminck, went so far as to call it "his atelier"' (J. Klein, exh. cat., The Fauve Landscape, Los Angeles, 1990, p. 134).
Following on from the colouristic exuberances of the previous two years, towards the end of 1907 Vlaminck found himself becoming increasingly disatisfied with the seeming formlessness of the Fauve
experiment: 'Working directly in this way, tube against canvas, one quickly arrives at an excessive facility. One ends in transposing mathematically. The emerald green becomes black, the pink flaming red, etc. Winning numbers come up at every draw and immediate success becomes an impasse. Preoccupied with light I neglected the object...either you think nature or you think light' (M. de Vlaminck, Dangerous Corner, London, 1961, p. 15).
A route out of this dilemma was offered by the Salon d'Automne of 1907. It devoted two rooms to a retrospective of Cézanne's work and while Vlaminck through his association with Vollard can hardly have been ignorant of Cézanne up to that point, the impact of such a large scale exhibition was to be profound. The protean quality of Cézanne's art offered many avenues of exploration and Vlaminck, as is evinced by Le Seine à Chatou, absorbed primarily Cézanne's lessons on building form through careful planar construction. Vlaminck also initiated a more obviously Cézannian palette of blue, green and ochre, with which he was to work for the following years.
Omnipresent throughout the various stages in Vlaminck's artistic career, acting as a sort of pictorial idée fixe, is his home town of Chatou and, in particular, its bridge. 'In art and in life this bridge had very particular associations for Vlaminck. It was not just a point from which he could reconnoiter his painting territory. The bridge was as vital to him as it was to Chatou itself. He later recalled his tutelage by the naïve painter "Monsieur Henri Rigal of Chatou," whom Vlaminck visited every day at "his favourite haunt under the bridge"...A contemporary critic, evidently recognising the bridge's importance to Vlaminck, went so far as to call it "his atelier"' (J. Klein, exh. cat., The Fauve Landscape, Los Angeles, 1990, p. 134).
Following on from the colouristic exuberances of the previous two years, towards the end of 1907 Vlaminck found himself becoming increasingly disatisfied with the seeming formlessness of the Fauve
experiment: 'Working directly in this way, tube against canvas, one quickly arrives at an excessive facility. One ends in transposing mathematically. The emerald green becomes black, the pink flaming red, etc. Winning numbers come up at every draw and immediate success becomes an impasse. Preoccupied with light I neglected the object...either you think nature or you think light' (M. de Vlaminck, Dangerous Corner, London, 1961, p. 15).
A route out of this dilemma was offered by the Salon d'Automne of 1907. It devoted two rooms to a retrospective of Cézanne's work and while Vlaminck through his association with Vollard can hardly have been ignorant of Cézanne up to that point, the impact of such a large scale exhibition was to be profound. The protean quality of Cézanne's art offered many avenues of exploration and Vlaminck, as is evinced by Le Seine à Chatou, absorbed primarily Cézanne's lessons on building form through careful planar construction. Vlaminck also initiated a more obviously Cézannian palette of blue, green and ochre, with which he was to work for the following years.