Chaïm Soutine

Jonas Netter, Paris (acquired by circa 1925)
Private Collection, Europe (by descent from the above; sale: Christie’s, London, 10th February 2011, lot 470)
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner 

Tokyo, Damaru Museum of Art; Osaka, Kintetsu Museum of Art (& travelling in Japan), Modigliani et son époque, Paris 1910-1912, 1997, no. 10, illustrated in the catalogue

Pierre Courthion, Soutine, Peintre du déchirant, Lausanne, 1972, no. D, illustrated p. 179
Maurice Tuchman, Esti Dunow & Klaus Perls, Chaïm Soutine, Catalogue raisonné, Cologne, 1993, vol. I, no. 8, illustrated in colour p. 358

The canvas is not lined and there do not appear to be any signs of retouching visible under UV light. There is a lovely thick impasto and this work is in overall very good condition.
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Chaïm Soutine's pictures, known for their textural bravura and focus on the sensual beauty of objects, astounded his contemporaries. Whether portraits of the working class, depictions of local monuments or still-lifes, he was able to invest vernacular subjects with a raw beauty that set him apart from the rest of the avant-garde. In Nature morte aux harengs avec plat ovale, the restless agitation that permeated and stimulated the artist bursts into the richly colored canvas; the artist projects this energy with the stroke of his virtuoso paintbrush. Maurice Tuchman has observed that 'the growing importance of individual brushstroke, the singular touch of the painter's hand, is shared by many modern Expressionists from van Gogh right through to the American Abstract Expressionists, passing through Soutine’ (Chaim Soutine, Catalogue raisonné, Cologne, 1993, vol. I, p. 35). In this way, the bold creativity of Nature morte aux harengs avec plat ovale appears to foreshadow the seething intensity of the subsequent avant-garde.

As well as echoing the magnificent seventeenth century still-lifes on display at the Louvre, the appetisingly arranged fish in the present work also evoke the artist's obsession with food. 'There is no question as to the overwhelming importance food held for Soutine, both consciously and somewhat less consciously. As a child, he suffered terrible poverty and hunger. Food was obviously not an aspect of daily life that could be taken for granted. [...] Food and the rituals associated with it played a dominant role in the family, community, and religion [...] In the still-life paintings of the early 1920s he has moved from a preoccupation with food images to a fixation on particular types of food – fish, fowl and beef. In these years it is especially upon fish that he concentrates, and ultimately emerges with a specific fish whose image he repeatedly paints' (ibid., pp. 339-40). A technical tour-de-force, Nature morte aux harengs avec plat ovale reveals Soutine’s extraordinary ability to distil the quotidian with a curious power.