Maria Melania Mutermilch (Mela Muter)

Collection of the artist, Paris
Collection of the Raskin family, New York (acquired directly from the artist in the early 1940s)

Mela Muter probably created this painting around 1921 while visiting Le Trayas, Cote d'Azur, since the landscape resembles that in a series of works she created at that time. This period of her oeuvre can be characterized by her use of heavy contour lines and thick blocks of color. Cezanne's mature style is suggested in these motifs, as well as in Muter's concern for geometry and perspectival recession, seen here from an elevated vantage in the disjointed horizon of trees and cliffs. Muter was concerned with other technical methods as well, as Cliffs of Le Trayas exhibits a clear interest in the Fauvist tendency to leave regions of the canvas empty.