- 375
Chaim Soutine
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Description
- Chaïm Soutine
- Paysage
- Signed Ch Soutine (lower right)
- Oil on canvas
- 18 1/4 by 24 in.
- 46.4 by 61 cm
Provenance
Sam Salz Inc., New York
Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Maslon, Minneapolis
Gift of the above in 2002
Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Maslon, Minneapolis
Gift of the above in 2002
Exhibited
Minneapolis Institute of Art, 1960 (on loan)
Catalogue Note
Mauriche Tuchman writes, "In a series of landscapes painted between 1936 and the end of his life, Soutine appears to have held himself at a distance in order to paint a broader, more grandiose vision. The art of the Thirties had aspired toward a state of timelessness and permanence... Often one senses in these late works a yearning for a new, safe childhood. The long receding road in many of them implies a heartsick loneliness... But it must be understood that, regardless of the period, Soutine's 'hand is the dancer, following the rhythm of the disturbances of the soul' (Chaim Soutine 1893-1943 (exhibition catalogue), Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe, Westfälisches Landsmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Münster; Tübingen, Kunsthalle; London, Hayward Gallery; Lucerne, Kunstmuseum, 1982, p. 69).
In 1939 Soutine spent his summer at Civry-sur-Serein, in the Department of the Yonne, near Auxerre. It was there when he began depicting children in his landscapes and the motif of tall poplar trees became more prominent. The road to L'Isle-sur-Serein was lined with tall poplars, and in the late afternoon the sun shone splendidly through the branches. Soutine painted several pictures of that road, as seen in one of the paintings currently in the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. Titled Windy Day, Auxerre, the work shows the road from Civry to l'Isle-sur-Serein painted under a stormy sky (Fig. 1). Soutine's earlier landscapes are imbued with a dense, rich color-pigment heightened by an expressionist stroke. His later works demonstrate a new stylistic element: the darting flick that delineates foliage and suggests motion in an otherwise vast and ephemeral space.
Paysage resonates an increased distance between painter and subject; the forms are moved into the middle-ground so that they are often encased above and below by areas of sky and ground that are roughly equal in size. There is a brooding sense that one's past is a journey long traveled and what the future holds is meant to remain a mystery, a path which we have to cross to reach the end.
Fig. 1 Chaim Soutine, Windy Day, Auxerre, 1939, oil on canvas, Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
In 1939 Soutine spent his summer at Civry-sur-Serein, in the Department of the Yonne, near Auxerre. It was there when he began depicting children in his landscapes and the motif of tall poplar trees became more prominent. The road to L'Isle-sur-Serein was lined with tall poplars, and in the late afternoon the sun shone splendidly through the branches. Soutine painted several pictures of that road, as seen in one of the paintings currently in the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. Titled Windy Day, Auxerre, the work shows the road from Civry to l'Isle-sur-Serein painted under a stormy sky (Fig. 1). Soutine's earlier landscapes are imbued with a dense, rich color-pigment heightened by an expressionist stroke. His later works demonstrate a new stylistic element: the darting flick that delineates foliage and suggests motion in an otherwise vast and ephemeral space.
Paysage resonates an increased distance between painter and subject; the forms are moved into the middle-ground so that they are often encased above and below by areas of sky and ground that are roughly equal in size. There is a brooding sense that one's past is a journey long traveled and what the future holds is meant to remain a mystery, a path which we have to cross to reach the end.
Fig. 1 Chaim Soutine, Windy Day, Auxerre, 1939, oil on canvas, Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.