L'atelier de l'artiste à la Cité Falguière

Details

Chaim Soutine (1894-1943)
L'atelier de l'artiste à la Cité Falguière
signed 'C Soutine' (lower left); signed again 'Soutine' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
25¾ x 19 5/8 in. (65.5 x 49.9 cm.)
Painted in Paris circa 1915-1916

Provenance

Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Miestchaninoff, Paris and New York (by 1950).
Anon. sale, Sotheby & Co., London, 4 July 1962, lot 15A (titled L'atelier du sculpteur, Oscar Miestchaninoff, Cité Falguière). Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York (by 1962).
Galerie d'Elysée (Alex Maguy), Paris (by 1970).

Literature

A. Forge, Soutine, London, 1965, p. 11.
R. Negri, Soutine, Milan, 1966, no. 1 (illustrated).
H. Serouya, Soutine, Paris, 1967, fig. 2 (illustrated).
P. Courthion, Soutine, Peintre du déchirant, Lausanne, 1972, p. 18, no. A (illustrated, p. 177 and in color, p. 19; titled L'atelier du peintre à Cité Falguière; dated 1914).
Marevna, Life with the Painters of La Ruche, London, 1972, p. 186. T. Satomi, "Cry and Silence," Sansai, no. 298, February 1973, pp. 24, 40, 49-51 (illustrated).
E. Hoffmann, "Soutine, Ausstellung in Paris," Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 26 July 1973.
P. Lévy, Des artistes et un collectionneur, 1976, p. 242.
A. Werner, Chaim Soutine, New York, 1977, pp. 11 and 13, fig. 3 (illustrated; dated 1914).
Westfälisches Landesmuseum, exh. cat., London, 1981, p. 131, no. 22 (illustrated).
M. Tuchman, E. Dunow and K. Perls, Chaim Soutine, Catalogue raisonné, Cologne, 1993, vol. I, p. 108, no. 1 (illustrated in color, p. 109).

Exhibited

New York, Museum of Modern Art, and Cleveland Museum of Art, Soutine Exhibition, November 1950-March 1951, pp. 33 and 112 (illustrated, p. 32).
Tokyo, Galerie Yoshii, Soutine, Peintre de la fatalité-fureur passionnée, January 1973, no. 1 (illustrated).
Paris, Orangerie des Tuileries, Soutine, April-September 1973, p. 4, no. 1.

Lot Essay

Having completed a three-year course in painting at the School of Fine Arts in Vilna, Lithuania, Soutine and his fellow student Michel Kikoïne arrrived in Paris in July 1913. They joined Pinchas Krémègne, another Vilna painter, who had already taken a studio in La Ruche ("The Beehive"), the rotunda built in Montparnasse for the Paris Exposition and later converted into artist's studios. Krémègne took them around to meet other expatriate artists, such as Marc Chagall, Jacques Lipchitz, Moise Kisling and Ossip Zadkine. In 1915 Lipchitz introduced Soutine to Amedeo Modigliani, who became a close friend and in turn directed him to the dealer Léopold Zborowski. In 1916 Soutine moved to the Cité Falguière, also in Montparnasse, the ramshackle studio building depicted in the present painting. Among his neighbors were Modigliani, Lipchitz, and Oscar Miestchaninoff, who at one time owned the present painting. During this period Soutine suffered in dire poverty, living on the meager wages from occasional day jobs and on handouts from friends.

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