Raoul Dufy

Mrs. Roëll-Jas, La Haye
E.J. Van Wisselingh & Co, Amsterdam
Private Collection, The Netherlands
Thence by descent to the present owner

Eindhoven, Stedelijk van Abbe Museum & Amsterdam, Stadelijk Museum, Raoul Dufy, 1955, no. 4
Laren, Singer Memorial Foundation, Kunstbezit Rondom Laren, 1958, no. 233

Maurice Laffaille, Raoul Dufy, Catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre peint, Geneva, 1972, vol. I, no. 199, illustrated p. 170

The canvas is lined. There is a layer of varnish through which the UV light cannot fully penetrate. There are areas of fluorescence, mainly in the darker pigment of the buildings and some further tiny specks in the upper centre of the sky, possibly retouching and visible under UV light. There are diagonal thin lines of craquelure towards the upper, lower right and lower left edges. There is a thin diagonal scratch to the centre left of the composition and tiny specks of paint loss to the upper right and lower left corners and towards the right of the lower edge. This work is overall in good condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue, although slightly warmer and less contrasting in the original.
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As Gertrude Stein once said, 'Raoul Dufy is pleasure itself' (quoted in Raoul Dufy: Le Plaisir (exhibition catalogue), Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, 2008, back cover, translated from French) and the present work is indeed a wonderful manifestation of the artist's natural joie de vivre. It was painted in 1906, a period when Fauvism was in its most innovative phase. For Charles Morice, writing in 1904, the first Fauve works signalled a change of focus 'from observation to interpretation, from realist art to decorative art' (C. Morice, 'Le XXe Salon des Indépendents', in La Mercure de France, May 1904, pp. 405-409, translated from French). Dufy, along with Matisse and Derain, was one of the most prominent artists right at the centre Fauvism, a short-lived but incredibly popular movement, whose daring palettes and loose brushwork earned them their nickname (the beasts). Matisse's famous pronouncement that art should be 'something like a good armchair in which to rest from physical fatigue' is certainly applicable to the remarkable lyricism and charm of the present work.

Maisons à Honfleur is painted with a strikingly vibrant palette - even by Fauve standards - and the shimmering pastels of the houses are beautifully framed by the bold fields of limey yellow and electric blue, not complimentary colours by accident. The present work is set in Honfleur, a seaside town immortalised not only by Dufy, but also by such great artists as Boudin, Monet, Seurat, Signac, and Marquet. Even if not a depiction of the sea as such, the painting exudes a maritime freshness which shows it is not far away. The scene is empty of figures and this creates a magical ambience of silence, in which time appears to have been suspended. Maisons à Honfleur combines Fauvism's most celebrated artistic elements of bold palette and gestural brushwork, but above it is a tribute to the life-affirming power of summer light. As Philip Taafe has remarked, in words that could have been written to describe the present work, 'Raoul Dufy's paintings astonish me for their meticulously regulated composition, achieved through a great economy of means, and the way in which they transcribe so precisely the sensations of light, atmosphere, and place' (in Raoul Dufy: Le Plaisir (exhibition catalogue), Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, 2008, p. 161).