Chaim Soutine

Georges Bernheim, Paris
Mrs. Oppenheim, Paris
Niveau Gallery, New York (circa 1944)
Theodore Schempp, New York (April 1945)
Valentine Gallery, New York
Donald and Jean Stralem, New York (by 1945)
By descent from the above to the present owner

Washington, DC, Phillips Memorial Gallery, 1943, no. 5
New York, Garden City, Roosevelt Field Art Center, Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, 1957
New York, Findlay Gallery, 1974
Roslyn, Nassau County Museum of Art, Long Island Collects, 1990

Pierre Courthion, Soutine, peintre du déchirant, Lausanne, 1972, no.C, illustrated p. 219

Maurice Tuchman writes, “During the so-called Cagnes period, 1923-25, the artist divided his time between Cagnes, neighboring villages, and Paris . . .  The mature Cagnes landscapes have an airy, buoyant, fairy tale quality.  More often than not, a large view of the town, seen from above, typifies the Cagnes style.  As noted, the road image serves as a visual entrance in the picture forms, as opposed to the striking absence of any possible accessibility in the Ceret works. . .  Energy that had been projected in the brushstroke and pigment becomes transformed into the composing and balancing of shapes.” (Maurice Tuchman, Esti Dunow and Klaus Perls, Chaim Soutine (1893-1943): Catalogue Raisonné, Werkverzeichnis, vol. 1, Cologne, 1993, p. 20)

As Tuchman describes, Soutine combines his energetic brushstroke in the present work with a careful arrangement of shapes.  A road guides the viewer into the composition at lower left toward the brightly colored houses perched precariously along the viewer's path, and toward the huge, deeply-colored trees at the right.  The two tiny figures Soutine adds to the painting appear as strokes of white overwhelmed by the movement of the surrounding trees.