Lot Essay
Cette œuvre sera incluse au troisième volume du catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre de Chaïm Soutine, actuellement en préparation par Esti Dunow et Maurice Tuchman.
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Provenant d'une collection privée française
Chaïm Soutine (1893-1943)
Maisons dans un paysage
Details
Chaïm Soutine (1893-1943)
Maisons dans un paysage
signé 'Soutine' (en bas à droite)
huile sur toile
50 x 61 cm.
Peint vers 1918-19
signed 'Soutine' (lower right)
oil on canvas
19 5/8 x 24 in.
Painted circa 1918-19
Maisons dans un paysage
signé 'Soutine' (en bas à droite)
huile sur toile
50 x 61 cm.
Peint vers 1918-19
signed 'Soutine' (lower right)
oil on canvas
19 5/8 x 24 in.
Painted circa 1918-19
Provenance
Galerie Georges Aubry, Paris (avant 1925).
Collection Horovitz, France; vente, Me Ader, Paris, 5 juillet 1933, lot 33 (titré 'Maisons rustiques dans un paysage').
Acquis au cours de cette vente par la famille du propriétaire actuel.
Collection Horovitz, France; vente, Me Ader, Paris, 5 juillet 1933, lot 33 (titré 'Maisons rustiques dans un paysage').
Acquis au cours de cette vente par la famille du propriétaire actuel.
Further Details
Peint vers 1918-19, ce paysage mouvementé de Soutine, encore jamais révélé au public, est une découverte récente, restée entre les mains de la même famille depuis le début des années 1930. Avec son rempart d'arbres impénétrables et noueux, il est assurément représentatif de la patte de l'artiste ; ce style emblématique par lequel Soutine traduit ses angoisses et fait vibrer ses toiles les plus fortes, à l'instar de Van Gogh, artiste qu'il admirait tant. Ici, toutefois, l'anxiété latente semble concentrée sur les maisons clôturées de l'arrière-plan. Soumises à une vue radicale en contreplongée, elles paraissent presque étranglées par la végétation et prisonnières de la colline ; un sentiment d'étouffement qui pourrait bien refléter le mal-être dont souffre alors l'artiste lituanien, rongé par la précarité.
En même temps, le coup de pinceau épais, nerveux, très gestuel, qui galvanise notamment la partie inférieure de la composition, évoque non seulement une certaine liberté artistique mais aussi une délivrance plus intime. Il semble trahir le soulagement que ressent Soutine en 1918, lorsqu’il quitte Paris (pour la première fois sans doute depuis son arrivée en France en 1913 pour visiter Vence et Cagnes – avec le soutien de son mécène Zborowski, et en compagnie de son ami artiste Modigliani. Les toits rouges et la végétation rampante pourraient porter à croire que le présent tableau date de ce voyage durant lequel le peintre se plonge dans la nature et précipite sa palette vers des couleurs plus vives, absentes des portraits et des scènes domestiques qui dominent son œuvre antérieure.
Le mouvement tourbillonnant et l'ardeur palpable que Soutine insuffle à ce paysage préfigure son évolution des années suivantes, ponctuées par les huiles de Céret et les célèbres vues de Cagnes, où il retourne au milieu des années 1920. Ici, on distingue d'ores et déjà l'agitation de ces tableaux du Midi, et même le chemin qui serpente et grimpe le long de tant de ses œuvres à venir. En ce sens, Paysage est un prélude rare et captivant du langage visuel, si singulier, que développera Soutine par la suite.
Painted circa 1918-19, this lively landscape by Soutine is a newly discovered work by the artist, having remained in the same family since the early 1930s and having never been publicly exhibited. Without doubt, the massed and tangled trees of the titular forest encompass Soutine’s signature style, through which he translates the anxieties that fueled his greatest paintings in a similar way to Van Gogh, an artist he deeply admired. Yet here, the anxiety seems to be concentrated in the houses in the background as they appear to be almost strangled by the trees and trapped on the top of a hill, resulting from the artist’s lower viewpoint, looking up towards the fenced houses. To some extent, this sense of suffocation may reflect the artist’s own struggles of being condemned to the miseries of poverty.
At the same time, the energy evident in the thick and dynamic brushstrokes with which the present lot has been executed and that animate the lower part of the composition in particular, suggest a certain artistic freedom and a sense of personal relief. They hint to the release that Soutine felt when, in 1918, he finally left Paris, possibly for the first time, encouraged by his dealer Zborowski and accompanied by his friend and fellow artist Modigliani, visiting first Vence and then Cagnes in South of France. The red roofs and the greenery in this painting imply that it may well have been painted on this journey, exposing him to the countryside, which prompted a liberation of his palette, introducing brighter colours that had been absent in the portraits and interiors that had formerly dominated his work. In South of France, he was remembered as a struggling artist sometimes without money or food by people whose recollections were published by Pierre Courthion in his monograph on the artist. Many of the locals would give him food when they could, and he became a familiar figure. In repayment, he captured some of them in oils. One of the reasons that Soutine had to resort to the charitable offerings of the locals was that he had spent his funds almost entirely on oils and canvases, a reflection of the intense dedication that he devoted to his painting. Indeed, for Soutine art was an integral part of his life, as necessary to him as breathing. It is this direct link between the artist and his works that lends them their intensity, their engaging and absorbing subjectivity, and, even in landscapes, a visceral quality that tends towards the existential. The sense of vortex-like movement and palpable life with which Soutine has invested this landscape prefigures the developments of the following few years, when he would paint his Céret oils and then returned once more to Cagnes to paint his celebrated pictures of that town in the mid-1920s. Here already, the landscape has been imbued with the movement and even the snaking, climbing red path of those later pictures. In this way,
Paysage provides an intriguing prefiguring of the unique landscape idiom that Soutine was already developing.
En même temps, le coup de pinceau épais, nerveux, très gestuel, qui galvanise notamment la partie inférieure de la composition, évoque non seulement une certaine liberté artistique mais aussi une délivrance plus intime. Il semble trahir le soulagement que ressent Soutine en 1918, lorsqu’il quitte Paris (pour la première fois sans doute depuis son arrivée en France en 1913 pour visiter Vence et Cagnes – avec le soutien de son mécène Zborowski, et en compagnie de son ami artiste Modigliani. Les toits rouges et la végétation rampante pourraient porter à croire que le présent tableau date de ce voyage durant lequel le peintre se plonge dans la nature et précipite sa palette vers des couleurs plus vives, absentes des portraits et des scènes domestiques qui dominent son œuvre antérieure.
Le mouvement tourbillonnant et l'ardeur palpable que Soutine insuffle à ce paysage préfigure son évolution des années suivantes, ponctuées par les huiles de Céret et les célèbres vues de Cagnes, où il retourne au milieu des années 1920. Ici, on distingue d'ores et déjà l'agitation de ces tableaux du Midi, et même le chemin qui serpente et grimpe le long de tant de ses œuvres à venir. En ce sens, Paysage est un prélude rare et captivant du langage visuel, si singulier, que développera Soutine par la suite.
Painted circa 1918-19, this lively landscape by Soutine is a newly discovered work by the artist, having remained in the same family since the early 1930s and having never been publicly exhibited. Without doubt, the massed and tangled trees of the titular forest encompass Soutine’s signature style, through which he translates the anxieties that fueled his greatest paintings in a similar way to Van Gogh, an artist he deeply admired. Yet here, the anxiety seems to be concentrated in the houses in the background as they appear to be almost strangled by the trees and trapped on the top of a hill, resulting from the artist’s lower viewpoint, looking up towards the fenced houses. To some extent, this sense of suffocation may reflect the artist’s own struggles of being condemned to the miseries of poverty.
At the same time, the energy evident in the thick and dynamic brushstrokes with which the present lot has been executed and that animate the lower part of the composition in particular, suggest a certain artistic freedom and a sense of personal relief. They hint to the release that Soutine felt when, in 1918, he finally left Paris, possibly for the first time, encouraged by his dealer Zborowski and accompanied by his friend and fellow artist Modigliani, visiting first Vence and then Cagnes in South of France. The red roofs and the greenery in this painting imply that it may well have been painted on this journey, exposing him to the countryside, which prompted a liberation of his palette, introducing brighter colours that had been absent in the portraits and interiors that had formerly dominated his work. In South of France, he was remembered as a struggling artist sometimes without money or food by people whose recollections were published by Pierre Courthion in his monograph on the artist. Many of the locals would give him food when they could, and he became a familiar figure. In repayment, he captured some of them in oils. One of the reasons that Soutine had to resort to the charitable offerings of the locals was that he had spent his funds almost entirely on oils and canvases, a reflection of the intense dedication that he devoted to his painting. Indeed, for Soutine art was an integral part of his life, as necessary to him as breathing. It is this direct link between the artist and his works that lends them their intensity, their engaging and absorbing subjectivity, and, even in landscapes, a visceral quality that tends towards the existential. The sense of vortex-like movement and palpable life with which Soutine has invested this landscape prefigures the developments of the following few years, when he would paint his Céret oils and then returned once more to Cagnes to paint his celebrated pictures of that town in the mid-1920s. Here already, the landscape has been imbued with the movement and even the snaking, climbing red path of those later pictures. In this way,
Paysage provides an intriguing prefiguring of the unique landscape idiom that Soutine was already developing.
Brought to you by
Valérie Didier