Raoul DUFY (1877-1953) [FRANCE] - Lot 11

Raoul DUFY (1877-1953) [FRANCE] Shellfish gatherers, circa 1925-1928 Oil on canvas. Signed lower center. 41 x 24 cm Provenance: Paris, Hôtel Drouot -Paris, Hôtel Drouot, April 30, 1931, no. 22. -Alphonse Bellier Collection, Paris -Powel Collection -Estate of Madame L. -Private collection, Monaco. Bibliography: Catalog Raisonné, Maurice Lafaille,Editions Motte, 1972, volume II, illustrated under no. 712, p.240. Our painting is of the utmost interest in Raoul Dufy's oeuvre, demonstrating the extent to which the artist can combine on the same canvas, several years apart, compositions that were the subject of earlier meditations. As early as 1908, a work dedicated to Guillaume Apollinaire (Vte Tajan, 10/12/1986) depicts shell collectors. The lower part of our painting features angularly articulated bodies on a mosaic background. The upper part is reminiscent of the tableaux de fêtes maritimes au large du Havre, an arrangement of various ships laid out in a checkerboard pattern on a blue background animated by white ripples (executed around 1925). "So it was in Le Havre that Dufy cast his blue hue" (Sophie Krebs). Blue, "light-color", radiates from the upper part of the painting, giving it a discreet mystical inspiration. Admire the interplay of the two contrasting perspectives that Dufy assembles in his painting: that of the rigorously vertical plane of the boats, opposed to that of the pickers, who stretch out into the depths. TEMPORARY IMPORT LOT