LOUIS VALTAT | Suzanne Valtat au renard

Private Collection, France
Sale: Christie's, New York, November 9, 2000, lot 209
James Francis Trezza, New York (acquired at the above sale)
Private Collection (acquired from the above in 2003)
Sale: Christie's, London, June 23, 2004, lot 185
Private Collection, New York (acquired at the above sale and sold: Sotheby's, London, February 6, 2013, lot 325)
Private Collection, Switzerland
Acquired from the above

Roslyn Harbor, Nassau County Museum of Art, La Belle Epoque and Toulouse-Lautrec, 2003 (dated 1907)
Lodève, Musée de Lodève, Louis Valtat, à l'aube du fauvisme, 2011, no. 84, illustrated in color in the catalogue

The work is in very good condition. The canvas is unlined. The edges have been covered with paper tape. The pigments are bright and fresh. There are some lines of craquelure, now notably in the upper left corner and in the areas of thickest impasto. A small area of pigment loss to the blue pigments in the lower left corner. Under UV light, a few fine strokes of inpainting in the background. Two pindot strokes in the figure's face. A two inch stroke of retouching and a few other minor strokes in the white pigments of the figure's dress.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Best known for his resplendent landscapes and vivid flower compositions, Louis Valtat was also a highly talented portrait painter of the Post-Impressionist period. Having absorbed the chief tenets of classical Impressionism and Pointillism in the 1890s, Valtat was both intrigued and influenced by the work of his burgeoning Fauve contemporaries such as Matisse, Marquet, Camoin, Manguin, Vlaminck, Derain and Dufy with whom he exhibited at the famous Salon d’Automne of 1905. The present work illustrates Valtat’s beautiful young wife, Suzanne Nöel, posing confidently in an immaculate white dress and a shock of orange fur draped around her neck. Painted in 1902, three years prior to the 1905 exhibition that launched the Fauve movement, the present work not only demonstrates Valtat’s love for Suzanne but also his instrumental role in the development of a Fauve vocabulary.

For Valtat, the turn of the century was a time of radical experimentation with brushstroke. Describing the technique of Valtat and his fellow avant-garde friends, Cogniat writes: “They laid on the pigment thickly…in strokes that resembled vivid scars and which no longer had anything in common with the hatchings of Impressionism” (Raymond Cogniat, Louis Valtat, Paris, 1963, p. 23). Yet in spite of the artist’s heavy application of paint, the airy subject matter maintains integrity of its own thanks to the stunning Fauve potpourri of floral tones. As Sarah Whitfield notes, “Louis Valtat, whose color appears to float on the surface of the canvas, is another painter somewhat loosely bracketed with the Fauves. Both Valtat, who like Matisse was born in 1869, and Seyssaud, who was two years older, belonged to the generation of painters who understood the picture surface to be primarily a flat piece of canvas covered with areas of paint" (Sarah Whitfield, Fauvism, London, 1991, p. 28). These “areas of paint” were charged with evocative color in an attempt to enliven the canvas and seduce the spectator. A stunning synthesis of simplicity of form and exuberant luminosity, the present work is one of the most poignant pre-Fauve examples that looks forward to this important movement.

This work is recorded in the archives of “l’Association Les amis de Louis Valtat.”