Raoul Dufy

Buchholz Gallery (Curt Valentin), New York
E&R Cyzer Gallery, London
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Maurice Laffaille, Raoul Dufy, Catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre peint, Geneva, 1973, vol. II, no. 438, illustrated p. 28

The canvas is not lined. UV examination reveals some retouching to the upper left corner, some spots to the sky, and tiny lines of retouching along the tree trunk of the right palm tree. There are some further spots of retouching to the centre and lower part of the left edge, and to the left part of the lower edge. There are some very fine lines of stable craquelure in places. This work is in overall good condition.
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Populated with a cast of stylish characters bedecked in hats and holding parasols, Raoul Dufy’s Le Casino de Nice aux deux vasques captures the breezy elegance of a summer’s afternoon on the Côte d'Azur. The scene is suffused with the deep and brilliant blue of the sky and the sea, perfectly offsetting the bold outline of La Jetée-Promenade, a fashionable casino located on the pier of the Promenade in Nice. Erected in 1882, the distinctive domes and intricate latticing of the building’s silhouette became a landmark feature of this magnificent coastline. Dufy himself returned to this motif repeatedly, even sketching the outline in ink from memory after he had left the city and the building had been demolished for its metals in 1944.

Painted circa 1930, the present work reveals Dufy’s singular assimilation of Fauvism’s lessons of a bold palette and gestural brushwork, but above all stands as a tribute to the life-affirming power of summer light. There is an intrinsic energy of movement and dynamism of form and colour, which contrasts to striking effect with the apparent simplicity and relative calm of the colour planes created by variations of blue and green, and yellow and red. A passionate follower of the effects of colour, once Dufy discovered the luminosity of the South of France in 1903 he returned almost every year. 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’ (quoted in Raoul Dufy: Le Plaisir (exhibition catalogue), Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, 2008, p. 161).