Raoul Dufy

Pierre de Tartas, France
Connaught Brown, London
Purchased from the above by the present owner

Executed in 1928-29, this is a preparatory work for the mural Dufy painted for the drawing room of Villa l'Altana in Antibes, commissioned by its owner Arthur Weisweiler. From 1920, Dufy spent increasing amount of time in the south of France, frequenting Vence, Nice, and Antibes, where he painted the brightly coloured landscapes, sea views, and still lifes for which he is best known. Dufy grew up in Normandy, and in 1900 was awarded a scholarship to study in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Here, he fell under the influence first of the Impressionists, then from 1905 of Henri Matisse. Matisse was the leading member of les Fauves (French for 'the wild beasts'), a group of early twentieth-century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values, and whose influence is clearly visible in works such as the present one. Dufy had his first one-man exhibition at the Galerie Berthe Weill, Paris, in 1906. He painted a huge mural, Electricity, for the 1937 Paris International Exhibition, and was awarded the main painting prize at the 1952 Venice Biennale.