Max Ernst

Dorothea Tanning, Bourg-la-Reine & New York

Private Collection, Switzerland (acquired in 1988)

Private Collection, Switzerland (acquired from the above. Sold: Christie's, London, 7th February 2012, lot 137)

Purchased at the above sale by the late owner

Stuttgart, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Max Ernst, 1970, no. 101 (titled Les Champs Elysées)

Munich, Haus der Kunst & Berlin, Nationalgalerie, Max Ernst. Retrospektive, 1979, no. 301, illustrated in the catalogue (with incorrect medium and measurements and as dating from 1957)

Ascoli Piceno, Complesso Monumentale di Sant'Agostino, Chagall - Licini e il sopra naturale... in Arp, Ernst, Klee, Miró, Savinio, 2001-02, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

John Russell, Max Ernst, Life and Work, London, 1967, no. 109, illustrated (with incorrect medium and as dating from 1957)

Edward Quinn, Max Ernst, Paris, 1976, no. 366, illustrated in colour p. 296 (with incorrect medium and as dating from 1957)

Werner Spies, Max Ernst Œuvre-Katalog, Werke 1954-1963, Cologne, 1998, no. 3343, illustrated p. 153

Ernst’s pre-war work had been characterised by a spirit of inventiveness and experimentation, and whilst this remained central to his art in the years directly following the war, he also began to channel his energy in new directions. Describing Ernst’s work of this period, Werner Spies commented: ‘He became increasingly preoccupied with issues intrinsic to his oeuvre and its development […]. On the whole, this process of self-questioning continued to be conducted in terms of the two fundamental techniques that he had first employed in the 1920s: collage and frottage […]. The latter, as a result of their technique, which covered the picture plane with a finely articulated, sensuous pattern, were devoted largely to subjects of a more painterly nature, ones that at first glance presented few problems of interpretation. The sensuousness of the transparent colours and textures could easily be related to the concerns of post-war painting in general’ (W. Spies in Max Ernst. A Retrospective (exhibition catalogue), Tate Gallery, London, 1991, p. 252).

In Dimanche après-midi sur Les Champs Elysées Ernst experiments with colour and form, scraping through layers of paint to create a wonderful complexity of texture. The figures appear to blend into the board as much as they emerge from it, creating a powerful interplay between foreground and background and, by implication, between subject and painted surface. This relationship appears to have particularly intrigued Ernst and found expression in another aspect of his post-war work. By 1958 Ernst was living in Huismes, a small village in the Loire region of France. Much of his work grew out of the surrounding environment; sculptures in particular were often formed from found objects and transformed into curious likenesses of the people that surrounded him. At the same time, his home there was populated with sculptures and paintings which came almost to take on an active role in the life of the household. The expressive physiognomy of the two figures of the present work, which are reminiscent of the puckish characters of his sculpture, reflects this conflation between his work and his life, as is indicated in the title – Dimanche après-midi sur Les Champs Elysées (Sunday afternoon on the Champs-Elysées).

The work’s first owner was the American artist Dorothea Tanning. Ernst and Tanning met in 1942 when he visited her studio in New York. The pair fell in love, marrying in a double ceremony with Man Ray and Juliet Browner in 1946. They lived first in Sedona in Arizona (fig. 1), before relocating to France. Tanning was already experiencing some success as an artist when she met Ernst and although influenced by the Surrealists, continued to develop a distinctive aesthetic of her own. Following Ernst's death in 1976 she returned to New York where she continued to paint and write to great acclaim until her death in 2012 at the age of 101.