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Description: 1877-1953
LES BARQUES AUX MARTIGUES

65.5 by 81cm., 25 5/8 by 31 7/8 in.

Painted circa 1907.

signed R. Dufy (lower centre)

oil on canvas

The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Fanny Guillon-Laffaille.

PROVENANCE

Galerie Salis & Vertes, Salzburg
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1998

EXHIBITED

Munich, Haus der Kunst, Künstlerbrüder Von den Dürers zu den Duchamps, 2005-06

NOTE

This painting belongs to a series of oils of this subject, which mark Dufy's transition from his fauve style toward an experimentation with Cubism and finally a more individual aesthetic. Here one clearly can see the increasing attention to the treatment of volumes and more complex compositions. This is discussed by D. Perez-Tibi in relation to another closely related painting of the same title: 'In the autumn of 1907, in Marseilles and Martigues, Dufy painted a series of works marked more by formal than by lyrical concerns. Les barques aux Martigues is one illustration of this new direction. While he remained devoted to a sustained chromaticism, he arranged his forms in a tiered perspective: the greatest emphasis is placed on a rigorous geometrical style which defines the structures repeated throughout the composition. A pivotal work, this painting reveals the influence of Cézanne and anticipated the new direction in which Dufy's experiments were to lead him at the beginning of 1908.

The fauve stage was only a brief episode in Dufy's career, but he was to retain its lesson of simplicity, the paring down of the subject. He was also never to lose the taste for colour which it gave him' (D. Perez-Tibi, Dufy, Paris, 1989, p. 32).

comp: 417D06008_COMP FIg.1, Raoul Dufy, Les Barques Aux Martigues , 1906 -07, oil on canvas, Courtauld Institute of Art, London