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Lot Essay
Maïthé Vallès-Bled and Godelieve de Vlaminck will include this painting in their forthcoming Vlaminck catalogue raisonné being prepared under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Institute.
Painted circa 1907, La Seine à Chatou is an intriguing landscape dating from a brief but exciting transitional period in Vlaminck's work. During the years between 1907 and 1910, Vlaminck created a unique group of paintings that combined the ardour and colourism of his Fauve period with a new-found sense of pictorial structure.
The discovery of the potential of structure, of a formalised armature, within his pictures was due to his Damascene revelation on seeing Paul Cézanne's paintings at the 1907 Salon d'Automne. This posthumous exhibition acted as a catalyst for many artists and had a huge impact on the whole face and development of modern art, from the Fauves to the Cubists. Cézanne's exploration of the necessary illusion of painting, his attempt to find a new and true way to depict the three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional surface, brought about a revolution amongst the younger generations of artists and its effects could be seen as much in Vlaminck's paintings as in Braque's and Picasso's.
Vlaminck felt that he had exhausted his palette. How much more intense could his colours become? He was already squeezing pure paints onto the canvas, unmixed, in order to harness colours. Discussing his Van Gogh-inspired Fauve pictures, he said that,
'I heightened all tones. I transposed into an orchestration of pure colours all the feelings of which I was conscious. I was a barbarian, tender and full of violence. I translated by instinct, without any method, not merely an artistic truth but above all a human one. I crushed and botched the ultramarines and vermilions though they were very expensive and I had to buy them on credit' (Vlaminck, quoted in John Rewald, Vlaminck: His Fauve Period, exh. cat., New York, 1968, p. 3).
There was nothing more that he could do. Thus the influence of Cézanne was timely. In La Seine à Chatou, Vlaminck has painted the same landscape, the same area, that featured in so many of his most famous Fauve landscapes. This is an emotional touchstone to which he has returned in order to further advance and develop his art, taking the familiar forms of the area around Chatou and filtering them through a new vision, a new means of understanding the appearance of the world and, importantly, a new means of presenting it. Here, in contrast to the Fauve paintings of Chatou, Vlaminck has presented the landscape in a formalised, structured manner that increases the sense of tangible form, of volume and depth, recalling pictures such as Cézanne's Le château de Medan in the Burrell Collection in Glasgow. The similarities between the two paintings are impressive, with the foliage used in a similar way in both pictures to frame the landscape on the other side of the water. But in a singularly Vlaminck-like display of flair, this same framing greenery in La Seine à Chatou also introduces a degree of theatricality, even of showmanship and revelation, that is absent in the pictures by Cézanne.
This interest in form and structure, so evident in La Seine à Chatou, still provides Vlaminck ample leeway for his intense colourism. The water still shimmers through his use of intense colour, and on closer inspection is made up of almost as much red and green as blue. The foliage itself is lush and lively, but now has the added benefit of a far more controlled contrast with the yellows and oranges of the sun-kissed houses in the background. Cézanne has increased Vlaminck's sense not only of structure, but has also honed his use and appreciation of colour. It is this combination of influences that lends the transitional paintings such as La Seine à Chatou their unique assurance and maturity, still blended with the celebrated Fauve intensity of his earlier works.
Painted circa 1907, La Seine à Chatou is an intriguing landscape dating from a brief but exciting transitional period in Vlaminck's work. During the years between 1907 and 1910, Vlaminck created a unique group of paintings that combined the ardour and colourism of his Fauve period with a new-found sense of pictorial structure.
The discovery of the potential of structure, of a formalised armature, within his pictures was due to his Damascene revelation on seeing Paul Cézanne's paintings at the 1907 Salon d'Automne. This posthumous exhibition acted as a catalyst for many artists and had a huge impact on the whole face and development of modern art, from the Fauves to the Cubists. Cézanne's exploration of the necessary illusion of painting, his attempt to find a new and true way to depict the three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional surface, brought about a revolution amongst the younger generations of artists and its effects could be seen as much in Vlaminck's paintings as in Braque's and Picasso's.
Vlaminck felt that he had exhausted his palette. How much more intense could his colours become? He was already squeezing pure paints onto the canvas, unmixed, in order to harness colours. Discussing his Van Gogh-inspired Fauve pictures, he said that,
'I heightened all tones. I transposed into an orchestration of pure colours all the feelings of which I was conscious. I was a barbarian, tender and full of violence. I translated by instinct, without any method, not merely an artistic truth but above all a human one. I crushed and botched the ultramarines and vermilions though they were very expensive and I had to buy them on credit' (Vlaminck, quoted in John Rewald, Vlaminck: His Fauve Period, exh. cat., New York, 1968, p. 3).
There was nothing more that he could do. Thus the influence of Cézanne was timely. In La Seine à Chatou, Vlaminck has painted the same landscape, the same area, that featured in so many of his most famous Fauve landscapes. This is an emotional touchstone to which he has returned in order to further advance and develop his art, taking the familiar forms of the area around Chatou and filtering them through a new vision, a new means of understanding the appearance of the world and, importantly, a new means of presenting it. Here, in contrast to the Fauve paintings of Chatou, Vlaminck has presented the landscape in a formalised, structured manner that increases the sense of tangible form, of volume and depth, recalling pictures such as Cézanne's Le château de Medan in the Burrell Collection in Glasgow. The similarities between the two paintings are impressive, with the foliage used in a similar way in both pictures to frame the landscape on the other side of the water. But in a singularly Vlaminck-like display of flair, this same framing greenery in La Seine à Chatou also introduces a degree of theatricality, even of showmanship and revelation, that is absent in the pictures by Cézanne.
This interest in form and structure, so evident in La Seine à Chatou, still provides Vlaminck ample leeway for his intense colourism. The water still shimmers through his use of intense colour, and on closer inspection is made up of almost as much red and green as blue. The foliage itself is lush and lively, but now has the added benefit of a far more controlled contrast with the yellows and oranges of the sun-kissed houses in the background. Cézanne has increased Vlaminck's sense not only of structure, but has also honed his use and appreciation of colour. It is this combination of influences that lends the transitional paintings such as La Seine à Chatou their unique assurance and maturity, still blended with the celebrated Fauve intensity of his earlier works.