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Artist or Maker: CHAÏM SOUTINE 1893 - 1943

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Date: Painted circa 1920.

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Description: PAYSAGE DE GRÉOLIÈRES
Signed Soutine (lower right)

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Medium: Oil on canvas

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Dimensions: 31 1/2 by 23 3/4 in. 80 by 60.3 cm

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Provenance: Carroll Carstairs Galleries, New York

Perls Galleries, New York

Clifford Odets, New York (acquired from the above by 1950 and sold: Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, October 22, 1952, lot 89)

Perls Galleries, New York (acquired at the above sale and until at least 1953)

Stephen Hahn, New York

Acquired from the above before 1959

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Exhibited: New York, The Museum of Modern Art; Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art, Soutine, 1950-51

New York, Perls Galleries, Chaïm Soutine, 1894-1943, 1953, no. 5

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Published: Pierre Courthion, Soutine, Peintre du Déchirant, Lausanne, 1972, fig. A, illustrated p. 227 (as dating from 1923)

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Notes:

During the 1920s, Soutine was enthralled by the picturesque hill towns nestled along France's southern coast, and those canvases that he completed of Céret, Cagnes, Vence, and Gréolières are some of the most expressive and imaginatively abstract of his entire career. Like his colleagues Matisse and Bonnard, Soutine was seduced by the natural beauty of the Côte d'Azur, and he expressed his intense reaction to the place in his canvases. The geological splendor of this region, with its dramatic cliffs and rolling hills, along with the vivid flora and intense sunlight of the Mediterranean, were the inspiration for Soutine's feverishly colorful compositions from this era. Indeed, these very canvases, including the present work, established Soutine as one of the most innovative landscapists of the 20th century. In this picture, Soutine provides us with an interpretive depiction of Gréolières, a small town near Vence. Apart from the trees that frame the forking pathway, Soutine's composition is demonstrated by an abstract vortex of swirling color.

Soutine's pictures, known for their textural bravura and focus on the sensual beauty of objects, astounded his contemporaries. Whether portraits of the working class, depictions of local monuments, landscapes or dead animals, he was able to invest vernacular subjects with a raw beauty that set him apart from the rest of the avant-garde. In the late 1920s, the art historian Elie Faure wrote a monograph on Soutine's work, in which he extolled the artist for the passion behind his paintings and the quasi-religious fervor that he felt they expressed. Faure's analysis of these pictures, although grippingly poetic in its formal descriptions, met with much controversy and ultimately alienated that artist from the author. Although his interpretations of these pictures are debatable, Faure provided a description of the artist that captures accurately the intensity of his character. "If you saw him in the street," Faure wrote, "in the pouring rain, with his fugitive look, his hat pulled down over his eyes, his beautiful, small, pale hands, this Kalmouk's face with his straight hair covering his forehead, you would feel as if you were watching unfold the drama of the Magi pushing towards the star [of Bethlehem] in search of rest" (quoted in Norman L. Kleeblatt and Kenneth E. Silver, An Expressionist in Paris, The Paintings of Chaïm Soutine (exhibition catalogue); The Jewish Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Cincinatti Art Museum, 1998-99, p. 34).