Nicolas de Staël

Private Collection, Paris
The Redfern Gallery, London
Galerie Beyeler, Basel (acquired from the above in August 1968)
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon (acquired from the above in January 1970)

Geneva, Galerie Motte, Nicolas De Staël (1914-1955), Peintures et dessins, July - August 1967, cat. no. 30

Jacques Dubourg and Françoise de Staël, Nicolas de Staël, Paris, 1968, cat. no. 872, p. 343, illustrated 
Guy Dumur, Nicolas de Staël, Paris, 1975, p. 67, illustrated in color
Daniel Dobbels, Staël, Vanves, 1994, p. 24, illustrated
Françoise de Staël, Nicolas de Staël: Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, Neuchâtel, 1997, cat. no. 924, p. 572, illustrated

This work is in excellent condition. There is a possible pinpoint loss to the navy blue pigment located 1 ¾" from the left and 4" from the bottom. The edges and corners exhibit slight intermittent wear. Under ultraviolet light there are no apparent restorations. The unframed canvas is edged with black linen tape.
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.

Glistening with an ethereal, otherworldly light, Nicolas de Staël’s Cap Blanc Nez represents the absolute paradigm of the painter’s mature idiom, based upon the organization of irregular geometric shapes into contrasting, architecturally delineated passages of color. De Staël’s brush viscerally carved dense blocks of paint into boldly defined paragraphs of form, revealing to the viewer a highly personal rendering of the artist’s surroundings: one that conveys an unbelievably poised composure and serenity. The potent immediacy of de Staël’s picture transports the viewer to the cape, capturing the tranquility and luminosity of the landscape with reductive geometric forms—the painter relied solely on color to create the illusion of space, light, and form, exploring abstraction for its capacity to convey moods and emotions aroused in him by nature. Cap Blanc Nez seizes the essence of an experience, rather than a faithful mimetic reproduction; in viewing the picture, we can almost hear the sea splashing against the cliffs and feel the salt-spattered mist lightly scattered across our faces.

Cap Blanc Nez displays de Staël’s signature fusion of abstraction with figuration: the artist effectively reconciled two ostensibly opposing styles whilst hovering thrillingly on the cusp of both. De Staël discussed his belief that a painting should follow both stylistic schools equally: “I do not set up abstract painting in opposition to figurative. A painting should be both abstract and figurative: abstract to the extent that it is a flat surface, figurative to the extent that it is a representation of space.” (the artist cited in Exh. Cat., Washington D.C., The Phillips Collection (and travelling), Nicolas de Staël in America, 1990, p. 22) The fortitude and sheer confidence of the artist’s brush is on full display in the present work, as the flat segments of verdant hues and shades of aquamarine are patched together to form a unique volumetric perspective. Entrancingly balancing the spatial depth of landscape with the self-reflexive two-dimensional flatness of abstract painting, the present work teeters on the brink of tradition and artistic innovation while achieving a sublime clarity of expression. Like Richard Diebenkorn, de Staël oscillated between the abstract and representational in his depictions of landscape, capturing the feeling of a place rather than its mimetic corollary. Moreover, exhibiting chromatic tendencies akin to Henri Matisse, the refinement and reductive sophistication of de Staël’s palette attained a highly cerebral and riveting sensorial simplicity.

Executed just a year before the artist’s tragic suicide at just forty-one years old, Cap Blanc Nez reflects the artist at the pinnacle of his output. Widely acknowledged as his most groundbreaking and productive period, it was at this time that he abandoned the palette knife for the confident bravado and control of the paint brush. Tantalizingly depicting in abbreviated forms the eponymous cape on the Côte d’Opale in the cliffs of northern France, the complex view is distilled into radically simplified yet complex interlocking forms that combine the inventive en plein air perspective of the Impressionist painters with the avant-garde modernist forms of Cubism. Initially painting still lifes and portraits at the advent of his career, de Staël turned to abstraction in 1942, while never entirely abandoning his interest in representation. Working in the vanguard tradition of early twentieth-century pioneers of modernism, de Staël’s circle of influence encouraged formal experimentation—the artist studied briefly under Fernand Leger and also maintained a close friendship with Georges Braque, whose distilled forms and abbreviated pictorial vocabulary similarly captured the outside world through abstraction. Following the artist’s death, the art historian Douglas Cooper wrote, “de Staël was unique among the painters of his generation in that he stood out against an easy-going acceptance of the non-figurative aesthetic and insisted on the responsibility of any serious painter to try and reconcile the pattern of abstract forms and arbitrary colors, which are the constituent elements of every picture, with the facts of a visual experience.” (Douglas Cooper, ‘Nicolas de Staël: In Memoriam,’ The Burlington Magazine, May 1956, vol. 98, no. 638, p. 140)