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拍品專文
This painting will be included in the forthcoming new edition of the Chaim Soutine catalogue raisonné currently being prepared by Maurice Tuchman and Esti Dunow.
Soutine first visited the French seaside resort of Cagnes-sur-Mer in 1919, and returned there often between 1922 and 1925. The artist's soujourns to Cagnes gave way to one of the most important periods in his artistic career, during which he painted some of his most compelling landscapes of an area which initially he could not endure. "I'd like to leave Cagnes," he wrote to his friend and dealer Léopold Zbrowski upon his arrival in this peaceful town on the Côte d'Azur. "I can't stand the landscape. I even went for a few days to Cap Martin, for I thought of settling there. I didn't like it. So I'm back in Cagnes against my will" (quoted in M. Castaing and J. Leymarie, Soutine, London, 1965, p. 26).
Hoping that Soutine would find happiness and artistic fulfillment outside of Paris, Zbrowski had sent the artist to Céret in the Midi during the final year of World War I. The works executed during his time in the Pyrénées were marked by a significant sense of claustrophia, the paint applied in a tempestuous and violent manner. By the time of his visits to Cagnes, however, the agitated brushstrokes of the Céret period had given way to clarity, balance, and near-symmetry of composition. Soutine's palette became more luminous, a change which was no doubt due to the influence of the Mediterranean climate. The artist eschewed the darkness and tension of his previous works in favor of dazzling sunlight and shimmering highlights, particularly visible in the winding steps and the sunlight glinting through the foliage in the present composition.
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 colours, 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, E. Dunow and K. Perls, Chaïm Soutine, Catalogue raisonné, Cologne, 1993, vol. I, p. 980).
Soutine himself considered the time he spent in Cagnes to represent a turning point in his oeuvre, preferring the airiness and exuberance of the Cagnes pictures to the jumbled, twisted landscapes of Céret. He would often try to buy back the paintings that he had produced before his time in the south of France, particularly those from the Céret period, in order to destroy them. The date of the present work is particularly notable, as 1923 marked an essential turning point in the artist's career. After encountering works by Soutine in the home of his friend Paul Guillaume, American collector Albert Barnes began to collect the artist's work in bulk, promoting him to collectors in both the United States and Europe and assuring his financial stability for the rest of his career.
Soutine first visited the French seaside resort of Cagnes-sur-Mer in 1919, and returned there often between 1922 and 1925. The artist's soujourns to Cagnes gave way to one of the most important periods in his artistic career, during which he painted some of his most compelling landscapes of an area which initially he could not endure. "I'd like to leave Cagnes," he wrote to his friend and dealer Léopold Zbrowski upon his arrival in this peaceful town on the Côte d'Azur. "I can't stand the landscape. I even went for a few days to Cap Martin, for I thought of settling there. I didn't like it. So I'm back in Cagnes against my will" (quoted in M. Castaing and J. Leymarie, Soutine, London, 1965, p. 26).
Hoping that Soutine would find happiness and artistic fulfillment outside of Paris, Zbrowski had sent the artist to Céret in the Midi during the final year of World War I. The works executed during his time in the Pyrénées were marked by a significant sense of claustrophia, the paint applied in a tempestuous and violent manner. By the time of his visits to Cagnes, however, the agitated brushstrokes of the Céret period had given way to clarity, balance, and near-symmetry of composition. Soutine's palette became more luminous, a change which was no doubt due to the influence of the Mediterranean climate. The artist eschewed the darkness and tension of his previous works in favor of dazzling sunlight and shimmering highlights, particularly visible in the winding steps and the sunlight glinting through the foliage in the present composition.
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 colours, 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, E. Dunow and K. Perls, Chaïm Soutine, Catalogue raisonné, Cologne, 1993, vol. I, p. 980).
Soutine himself considered the time he spent in Cagnes to represent a turning point in his oeuvre, preferring the airiness and exuberance of the Cagnes pictures to the jumbled, twisted landscapes of Céret. He would often try to buy back the paintings that he had produced before his time in the south of France, particularly those from the Céret period, in order to destroy them. The date of the present work is particularly notable, as 1923 marked an essential turning point in the artist's career. After encountering works by Soutine in the home of his friend Paul Guillaume, American collector Albert Barnes began to collect the artist's work in bulk, promoting him to collectors in both the United States and Europe and assuring his financial stability for the rest of his career.