Chaim Soutine

Alphonse Kann, Paris

Private Collection, Brussels (acquired from the above in the late 1940s and sold: Sotheby's, London, February 5, 2001, lot 16)

Acquired at the above sale

Paris, Galerie Charpentier, L'Ecole de Paris dans les collections Belges, 1959

 

Elie Faure, Soutine, Paris, 1929, illustrated pl. 3 (as dating from 1917)

Pierre Couthion, Soutine, peintre du déchirant, Lausanne, 1972, p. 183, no. C, illustrated (as dating from 1917)

Soutine, Céret 1919-1922 (exhibition catalogue), Musée d'Art Moderne, Céret, 2000, p. 512 (as dating from 1919 and with the incorrect measurements 65 by 46 cm)

This work is in excellent original condition. Original canvas. The canvas is strip lined on the right side. The impasto is intact. Apart from a few hair-lines of inpainting to the bottom left of the figure, barely visible under ultra-violet light, and one small spot in the figure's elbow and two small spots at the bottom center of the composition.
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.

The highly mannered Le Rouquin (The Redhead) is an important early portrait executed at the height of Soutine's Expressionist style. Although he is not formally identified, recent scholarship has suggested that the sitter for this work is possibly Frank Burty Haviland (1886-1971), the wealthy American painter, dealer and curator of the museum at Céret.  Haviland (see fig. 1) was the brother of the photographer Paul B. Haviland, a prominent member of the Photo-Succession, and the grandson of the founder of the French porcelain company, Haviland & Compagnie.  While a young man living in Paris before World War I, he befriended Picasso, Modigliani, Soutine and other artists of Montparnasse.  Modigliani painted his portrait in 1914 (see fig. 2), and Soutine captures the prominent features of this dashing young man yet again in this picture.  Early scholarship has suggested that Soutine painted this work around 1917.  But given the probable identity of the sitter at the time at which the artist knew him, it is possible that Soutine painted this work as late as 1919. 

In this picture, the formality of the figure's dress - with starched collars, dark tie and white handkerchief - suggests that the work is perhaps a commissioned portrait, and Soutine appears to relish his treatment of the man's face and elongated right hand in particular. The portrait epitomizes Soutine's mature style, with its great expressiveness of gesture, rhythmically charged brushstroke and use of earthy colors.

Monroe Wheeler writes of the group of artists with whom Soutine mixed in Paris in the late 1910s, and of his character as an artist: "Soutine, Pascin, Utrillo and Modigliani - they have been grouped together as though violence of temper and proneness to trouble constituted a school of art. In France they are called Les peintres maudits - painters under a curse... Soutine was the least calamitous and least dissipated of the four, but perhaps the saddest. For as his art developed, it offered no distraction from his anxieties, animosities and self-reproach - no escape. Not that he intended any effect of autobiography by means of his art. But from an early age he used his hardship, pessimism and truculence to set a tragic tone for his painting, irrespective of its subject matter. Limiting the themes of his work to conventional categories - still life, landscape, portraiture and picturesque figure-painting - he would always charge his pictures with extreme implications of what he had in mind: violence of nature, universality of hunger, and a peculiar mingling of enthusiasm and antipathies" (Monroe Wheeler, Chaïm Soutine, New York, The Museum of Modern Art (exhibition catalogue), 1950, p. 31).

Regardless of the age, social status, or the artist's personal involvement with the sitter, Soutine's portraits are imbued with a strong physical presence, as well as with the uniqueness and individuality of his subjects (see figs. 3 & 4).  Although the physical distortions and exaggerations are often a reflection of the painter's own emotional states and anxieties, they never stand in the way of showing the character of the portrayed person.  As the authors of the Catalogue raisonné of Soutine's work have commented:  "While his portraits do convey inner realities and make spiritual statements, they are primarily rooted in concrete perception.  Though Soutine may project his inner turbulence and most personal feelings onto his subjects, the viewer never loses sight of a particular physical entity being carefully observed and experienced.  Even the distortions and exaggerations of facial features and the shiftings and dislocations of body parts do not destroy the essential recognition in each painting of a certain person and a reality specific to him or her" (Maurice Tuchman, Esti Dunow & Klaus Perls, Chaïm Soutine, Catalogue raisonné, vol. II, Cologne, 1993, p. 509).

Fig. 1, Frank Burty Haviland, 1910.  Photograph Musée Picasso, Paris

Fig. 2, Amedeo Modigliani, Portrait de Frank Burty Haviland, 1914, oil on cardboard, Gianni Mattioli Collection, on loan to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

Fig. 3, Chaïm Soutine, L'Homme au foulard rouge, circa 1921, oil on canvas, sold: Sotheby's, London, February 5, 2007, lot 40, $17,236,220

Fig. 4, Chaïm Soutine, Le Violoncelliste (M. Serevitsch), circa 1916, oil on canvas, Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio