Raoul Dufy

Mme Danièle Drouant-Lacombe, Paris

Galerie Daniel Malingue, Paris

Sale: Christie's, London, 21st June 1993, lot 30

Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Warsaw, National Museum of Poland, Maîtres de l'art indépendant, 1937, no. 54

Geneva, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Raoul Dufy, 1952, illustrated in colour on the back cover of the catalogue

Paris, Galerie Bernheim Jeune-Dauberville, Chefs-d'œuvre de Raoul Dufy, 1959, no. 25

Paris, Galerie Europe, Hommage à Raoul Dufy, 1967, no. 12 (with incorrect measurements)

Tokyo, Palais France, Galerie Drouant, Raoul Dufy, 1974, no. 14, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

London, Hayward Gallery, Raoul Dufy, 1983-84, no. 97, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Paris, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Raoul Dufy. Le plaisir, 2008-09, no. 83, illustrated in colour in the catalogue 

Maurice Laffaille, Raoul Dufy. Catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre peint, Geneva, 1976, vol. III, no. 1366, illustrated p. 362 and illustrated in colour p. 363

Dora Perez-Tibi, Dufy, London, 1989, fig. 297, illustrated in colour p. 232

Xavier Girard & Dora Perez-Tibi, Dufy. Le peintre- écorateur, Arcueil, 1993, no. 93, illustrated in colour p. 116

Rendered in a brilliant palette dominated by red, pink and yellow tones, La Martiniquaise is a resplendent example of Dufy’s mastery as a colourist. Like many of his later canvases, the present work is a celebration of colour and pattern, stemming back to the fateful moment at the Salon d’Automne of 1905 when he first saw Matisse’s Luxe, calm et volupté, prompting his famous proclamation: ‘At the sight of this picture I understood all the new reasons for painting, and Impressionist realism lost its charm for me as I contemplated the miracle of the imagination introduced into design and color. I immediately understood the new pictorial mechanics’ (quoted in John Elderfield, The ‘Wild Beasts’: Fauvism and Its Affinities, New York, 1976, p. 78).

 

Writing about the present work, Dora Perez-Tibi observed : ‘While The Martinican Woman attests to Dufy’s liking for a certain exoticism, she also contributes to a seductive and decorative composition. This combines the warmth of a range of colour stressing reds, pinks, ochres and yellows, punctuated with white and green, and an ornamental richness which does not weigh down the composition as a whole. The figure remains admirably in the foreground despite the flatness of this composition, counterbalanced by the oblique angles of the folds of the dress and her arms and feet, and by the faint hints of the bed. Dufy has painted the model in his bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed, with a fabric bearing a Bianchini-Férier pattern of arum lilies draped over the walls of the room. Behind the model stands a canvas panel in intense colours, painted in Tournon in 1930’ (D. Perez-Tibi, op. cit., p. 244).