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Lot Essay
Soutine first visited Cagnes-sur-Mer in 1919 accompanied by Modigliani, returning frequently between 1922 and 1925. The time spent in Cagnes came to represent one of the most important periods in Soutine's artistic career, during which he painted some of his most challenging landscapes, and the present work, as one of the so-called 'red stairs' paintings, belongs to the group of works that best displays the advances made during those years. The tempestuous style of his earlier days at Céret here gives way to a more ordered and lucid articulation of his vision. The circumscribed space of the Céret pictures, with their swirling waves of color and chaotic compositions, was replaced by a sense of clarity and balance, in which each independent element of the composition exists within its own defined space.
'The opening up of the space is reiterated by the frequent inclusion of a form that visually and literally (a road or steps) invites us to enter. This accessibility is diametrically opposed to the claustrophobic sensation generated by the Céret paintings of finding ourselves already inside the landscape. Greater atmospheric breadth and luminosity, a brighter palette of increasingly pastel-like colors, and a reduced sense of scale (note the little figures on all the roads) all contribute to this sense of expansion. They also introduce a note of playfulness, in contrast to the seriousness of Céret' (M. Tuchman, et. al., p. 980). Soutine himself considered this time a turning point in his artistic output, and would often try to buy back the paintings that he had produced before, particularly those from the Céret period, in order to destroy them.
This period of artistic transformation also coincided with a change in fortune for Soutine. In 1923 the pharmaceutical manufacturer Dr. Albert C. Barnes of Merion, Pennsylvania had bought around sixty of Soutine's canvases. Paul Guillaume wrote of Barnes seeing Soutine's portrait of a pastry chef that Guillaume had just acquired; 'When Barnes saw it at my place, he exclaimed, "But it's a beauty." The spontaneous pleasure he felt upon seeing the work was to suddenly change Soutine's fortune and destiny, turning him overnight into a painter of renown, sought after by art lovers, who began to take him seriously; and for Montparnasse he became a hero' (Les Arts à Paris, no. 7, January 1923, pp. 5-7).
The present work has not been exhibited in public since it was acquired by the present owner's father at the auction of Mrs. Cornelius J. Sullivan's collection at Parke-Bernet in December 1939. Mary Sullivan, along with Abby Rockefeller and Lillie Bliss, an early supporter of contemporary art and among the patrons of Alfred Barr's planned Museum of Modern Art for New York, had wide-ranging tastes and Rue à Cagnes hung in her collection beside major works by Cézanne and Derain.
'The opening up of the space is reiterated by the frequent inclusion of a form that visually and literally (a road or steps) invites us to enter. This accessibility is diametrically opposed to the claustrophobic sensation generated by the Céret paintings of finding ourselves already inside the landscape. Greater atmospheric breadth and luminosity, a brighter palette of increasingly pastel-like colors, and a reduced sense of scale (note the little figures on all the roads) all contribute to this sense of expansion. They also introduce a note of playfulness, in contrast to the seriousness of Céret' (M. Tuchman, et. al., p. 980). Soutine himself considered this time a turning point in his artistic output, and would often try to buy back the paintings that he had produced before, particularly those from the Céret period, in order to destroy them.
This period of artistic transformation also coincided with a change in fortune for Soutine. In 1923 the pharmaceutical manufacturer Dr. Albert C. Barnes of Merion, Pennsylvania had bought around sixty of Soutine's canvases. Paul Guillaume wrote of Barnes seeing Soutine's portrait of a pastry chef that Guillaume had just acquired; 'When Barnes saw it at my place, he exclaimed, "But it's a beauty." The spontaneous pleasure he felt upon seeing the work was to suddenly change Soutine's fortune and destiny, turning him overnight into a painter of renown, sought after by art lovers, who began to take him seriously; and for Montparnasse he became a hero' (Les Arts à Paris, no. 7, January 1923, pp. 5-7).
The present work has not been exhibited in public since it was acquired by the present owner's father at the auction of Mrs. Cornelius J. Sullivan's collection at Parke-Bernet in December 1939. Mary Sullivan, along with Abby Rockefeller and Lillie Bliss, an early supporter of contemporary art and among the patrons of Alfred Barr's planned Museum of Modern Art for New York, had wide-ranging tastes and Rue à Cagnes hung in her collection beside major works by Cézanne and Derain.