MAURICE DE VLAMINCK | Rusticité or Les Enfants dans un jardin

(Possibly) Jean Metthey, Paris
(Possibly) Gerson, New York
Sale: Galerie Motte, Geneva, 28-29th June 1968, lot 24
Sale: Hôtel des Ventes, Enghien, 23rd November 1986, lot 76
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Paris, Grandes Serres de la Ville de Paris, Société des artistes indépendents. Catalogue de la 21e exposition, 1905, no. 4153
Chartres, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Turin, Palazzo Graneri, Ferrara, Palazzo dei Diamanti & Aosta, Centro Saint-Benin, Vlaminck, Le Peintre et la critique, 1987-88, no. 4, illustrated in colour in the catalogue (as dating from 1903-04)
Tokyo, Mitsukoshi (& travelling in Japan), Exposition Vlaminck, Pionnier du Fauvisme, 1989, no. 3, illustrated in colour in the catalogue (as dating from 1903-04)

Maïthé Vallès-Bled, Vlaminck: il pittore e la critica, Milan, 1988, no. 4, illustrated in colour p. 126
Massimo Carrà, Vlaminck, Milan, 1990, no. 3, illustrated in colour p. 31
Maïthé Vallès-Bled, Maurice de Vlaminck, œuvres 1900-1956, Paris, 1991, no. 5, illustrated in colour n.p.
Maïthé Vallès-Bled, Vlaminck, Critical Catalogue of Fauve Paintings and Ceramics, Paris, 2008, no. 9, illustrated in colour p. 69

The canvas is lined. Examination under UV light reveals no signs of retouching. This work is in overall very good condition.
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Painted in 1903, Rusticité or Les Enfants dans un jardin is an extraordinary example of Vlaminck’s ability to deconstruct an image, translating the natural world into a dazzling array of pure pigments applied in broad brushstrokes. Executed with particularly expressive brushstrokes, the dominating palette of cooler blue and green hues is here complemented with intense highlights of hot red, yellow and pink tones towards the edges of the composition. Discussing the early period of his career, the artist himself explained his creative urge and his passion for colour: ‘When I had spent a few days without thinking, without doing anything, I would feel a sudden urge to paint. Then I would set up my easel in full sunshine […] Vermilion alone could render the brilliant red of the tiles on the opposite slope. The orange of the soil, the harsh crude colours of the walls and greenery, the ultramarine and cobalt of the sky achieved an extreme harmony that was sensually and musically ordered. Only the series of colours on the canvas with all their power and vibrancy could, in combination with each other, render the chromatic feeling of that landscape’ (quoted in Gaston Diehl, The Fauves, New York, 1975, p. 104).

An expression of his youthful instincts, Vlaminck’s passion for colour reflects his incessant questioning on the interpretation of space; his early landscapes were the surface on which he tested his theories, furthered his research, mixed different influences and refined his inventiveness. The paintings of this period anticipate the evolution in Vlaminck’s approach from the dazzling Fauve canvases of 1904-07 to the moment he shifted towards a more subdued approach strongly influenced by Cézanne in 1908. Vlaminck used Cézanne's example as a restraining influence, reining in the gestural audacities and colouristic excesses. The most defining influence on Vlamick’s work at this time, however, was Van Gogh. In 1901, the artist had visited the Van Gogh retrospective at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, and he later recalled that this experience redefined his artistic path, going so far as to say he that he ‘loved van Gogh that day more than [his] own father’ (quoted in Judi Freeman, The Fauve Landscape, Los Angeles, 1990, pp. 14-15). Writing about the influence of Van Gogh on Vlaminck’s art of this period, John Rewald commented: ‘In spite of all his admiration for Van Gogh’s canvases, he immediately recognized in him a formidable adversary. Here was a man who had the same aspirations as himself, who had translated in his work the same torments and exaltations, the same visions and impressions with which he was struggling. And he had translated them with pure colours and brushstrokes, so expressive that all his emotions seemed to lay bare his canvases. Compared with the pursuit of delicate light effects characteristic of the Impressionists, whose pictures Vlaminck had seen occasionally in Paris, Van Gogh suddenly burst forth with an unprecedented intensity of colour and design. Back in Chatou, Vlaminck began to assimilate van Gogh’s lesson’ (John Rewald, Modern Masters, Manet to Matisse, New York, 1975, p. 116).

Rusticité or Les Enfants dans un jardin was first exhibited at the 1905 Salon des Indépendants, the same year that Vlaminck and his colleagues gained notoriety at the Salon d'Automne for the explosion of colour that earned them the name 'Les Fauves' (‘wild beasts’).