Raoul Dufy

Galerie Druet, Paris
Private Collection, London

Very good condition. Original canvas. Surface is clean. There are a few scattered areas of craquelure in red sky in the center. Under UV light, there are a few pinhead-size dots of inpainting along center left edge and upper edge to cover frame abrasion. Otherwise, fine.
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Born in Le Havre, Dufy was always fascinated by the sea as well as the pageantry associated with the fanfare surrounding lively regattas, crew races and every day activities at the ocean.  He began to explore the subject as early as 1903 (fig 1).  Dufy saw the sea and rivers as backdrops for human activities and made use of the freedom and dynamism of his composition with strong pure colors to express the smells and sounds associated with the outdoors.

Like other artists of his generation, Dufy was confronted with the fundamental problem of a work of art: how to reconcile the illusion of representation, and the reality of it as perceived by the artist himself.  The answer lay, for Dufy, in the exploration of color and light.  He replaces detail for a more general impression of the motion of the water and the activity of people at this popular location in Le Havre.  As Dufy himself noted, "Unhappy the man who lives in a climate far from the sea, or unfed by the sparkling waters of a river!... The painter constantly needs to be able to see a certain quality of light, a flickering, an airy palpitation bathing what he sees" (Dora Perez-Tibi, Dufy, New York, 1989, p. 158). 

Another version of this work and of the same size, La place et L'Estacade au Havre,  was executed by Dufy in 1926. It is in the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Le Havre, and has been included in a number of exhibitions in France and Japan.  

Fig. 1 Raoul Dufy, Les Bains Marie-Christine a Sainte-Adresse, 1903