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PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE LATE CHARLES AND MARY DUGAN-CHAPMAN, LONDON

1877-1953
LA PLAGE DE SAINTE-ADRESSE

measurements
54 by 65cm.

alternate measurements
21 1/4 by 25 5/8 in.

Painted in 1906.

signed Raoul Dufy and dated 1906 (lower right)

oil on canvas

To be included in the second supplement to the Catalogue raisonné de l'~uvre peint de Raoul Dufy being prepared by Fanny Guillon-Laffaille.

PROVENANCE

Galerie Drouant-David, Paris
Sale: Sotheby's, London, 29th March 1988, lot 20
Purchased at the above sale by the late owners

NOTE

Painted in 1906, at the height of Dufy's Fauve style, the present work is a wonderfully vibrant image of the beach at Sainte-Adresse, with its fashionably dressed strollers observing the sunset. In July and August of 1906 Dufy travelled in the company of Albert Marquet along the Normandy coast, each artist exploring in his own way the expressive potential of colour and form evoked by the scenes they encountered in the popular resorts of Le Havre and Sainte-Adresse. In 1901-02 Dufy executed several views of the beach at Sainte-Adresse in the manner of Eugène Boudin, and in 1904 he first became familiar with the divisionist technique of Paul Signac, during a major exhibition at the Galerie Druet in Paris. It was not until the 1905 Salon des Indépendants, however, when Dufy saw Henri Matisse's Luxe, calme et volupté, that his own art changed dramatically. 1906, when La Plage de Sainte-Adresse was executed, proved to be the seminal year of Dufy's career, during which he exhibited in both the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d'Automne, and had his first one-man show at the Galerie Weill in Paris. Moreover, 1906 heralded Dufy's widespread recognition as an artist and marked the height of his Fauve years.

The present work is a remarkable example of the wild, bright palette Dufy had discovered at this time, with the vivid yellow and orange tones of the sunset washing over the coast forming a dynamic contrast with the cooler hues of the sea and the men's clothes. The artist himself said of his paintings of this period: 'Around 1905-06, I was painting on the beach of Sainte-Adresse. I had previously painted beaches in the manner of the Impressionists, and had reached saturation point, realizing that this method of copying nature was leading me off into infinity, with its twists and turns and its most subtle and fleeting details. I myself was standing outside the picture. Having arrived at some beach subject or other I would sit down and start looking at my tubes of paint and my brushes. How, using these things, could I succeed in conveying not what I see, but that which is, that which exists for me, my reality? [...] From that day onwards, I was unable to return to my barren struggles with the elements that were visible to my gaze. It was no longer possible to show them in their external form' (quoted in Dora Perez-Tibi, Dufy, London, 1989, pp. 22-23).