Raoul Dufy

Raoul Dufy , born the June 3rd 1877 with the Harbor and dead the March 23rd 1953 with Forcalquier, is a painter, draftsman, engraver, illustrator of books, fabric creator, ceramist, creator of tapestries and furniture, decorator of interior, decorator of public spaces and decorator of theater French.

Biography

As from 1893, Raoul Dufy follows the courses of the evening of Charles Lhuillier to the Council school of the Art schools of Le Havre. He meets Raimond Lecourt and Othon Friesz with which he will divide then a workshop with Montmartre and which will remain one of his/her more faithful friends. He paints Norman landscapes with the Aquarelle.

In 1900, it enters to the 3Ecole Nationale Sup3erieure of the fine arts of Paris, where it finds Othon Friesz. It draws much. Its first exposure (with the Living room of the French Artists) takes place in 1901. Then it exposes in 1903 to the Salon of Independent the. The painter Maurice Denis buys a fabric to him. He paints much around the Harbor, and in particular on the beach of Holy-Addresses made famous for Eugene Boudin and Claude Monet. In 1904, with his friend Albert Marquet, he works, always on the reason, with Fécamp.

Influenced by the Fauvisme and in particular by the work of Matisse, he works with Friesz, Lecourt and Marquet on tables of pavoized streets of flags, village f4etes, beaches.

In 1908, become aware of the major importance of Cézanne during the great retrospective of 1907, it gives up the fauvism. It carries out studies of trees, horses, models in workshop, dead natures. This same year, it goes to Estaque (see external bond), close to Marseilles with Georges Braque. They paint, often side by side, the same reasons as Cézanne.

It remains in the “Médicis free Villa” (which accommodates young painters deprived of resources) in Orgeville with André Lhote and Jean Marchand. In their company, it is directed towards the constructions influenced by the beginnings of the Cubisme of Directs and Picasso.

It realizes into 1910 wood engraved for the Bestiaire of Apollinaire. (It will do of them others for the legendary Poèmes of France and the Brabant of Emile Verhaeren).

In 1911, he marries Niçoise, Eugenie-Émilienne Brisson. Called by the large dressmaker Paul Poiret who was impressed by engravings of the Bestiaire , it launches out in the creation of reasons for fabrics of mode and decoration. Indeed, the impression of fabrics then is carried out using wood engraved. With Paul Poiret, it assembles a small company of decoration and impression of fabrics, “the Small Factory”. It prints there its first hangings and fabrics which will make the celebrity of Paul Poiret. One year later, it is engaged by the Lyons house of silk trade Bianchini-Ferrier for which it will create innumerable reasons according to its favorite topics (naïades, animals, birds, flowers, butterflies…), which will be " put in carte" for weaving on the Jacquard looms. This collaboration will be prolonged until 1930.

Always influenced by Cézanne, its drawing becomes however more flexible during its stay of 1913 with Hyères.

In 1915, it engages in the automobile service of the army.

During its first stay with Vence in 1919, the colors of its tables become more sharp and its drawing plus baroque.

It launches out in the Lithographie with the Madrigaux of Mallarmé in 1920. (Thereafter, it will carry out of it for the Poet assassinated of Guillaume Apollinaire). This same year the Bœuf on the Roof of Jean Cocteau is represented with decorations and costumes of Dufy.

Under the impulse of Paul Poiret and eager to realize of the effect of its fabrics on the women, it starts to attend the racecourses in 1922; it aesthetically takes there taste with the spectacle of crowd, the horses, and the movements. It makes watercolours more and more, and works the Céramique as from 1923 with the large Catalan ceramist Artiguas.

Dufy travels much. He discovers Italy (Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples, the Sicily then Morocco and Spain. He admires the paintings of Titien to the Musée of Prado. He also travels to Belgium and in Angleterre.Il remains with Nice of 1925 to 1929 with its wife niçoise.

In 1926, by looking at a little girl who runs on the quay of Honfleur, it understands that the spirit records the color more quickly than contour. It then will dissociate the colors and the drawing. He adds his drawing to broad band of colors (generally three) horizontal or vertical, or to broad coloured spots.

He carries out paperboards for furnishing fabrics carried out in Tapisserie by the Manufacture of Beauvais on the topic of Paris. Its table the Bed enters to the Museum of Luxembourg in 1932.

In 1936-1937, helped by his brother Jean Dufy, it realizes for the House of the Electricity of the International exhibition, greatest painting existing in the world: the Fairy Electricity (624 m ²), now visible with the Museum of Modern art of the Town of Paris.

Raoul Dufy starts to feel, in 1937, the first attacks of a disease painful and invalidating: the Polyarthritis rhumatoïde. He is named member of the Jury of the Carnegie Price to Pittsburgh.

The watercolours of the Loire ch4ateau and Venice (many sights of the city and the lagoon) are born in 1938. He also works with very large panels for the Palais of Chaillot: the Seine of Paris to the Sea . Othon Friesz carries out those of the Seine of the source in Paris .

Refugee in the south of France to the beginning of the year 1940, it paints the paperboards for the great tapestries Collioure and the beautiful summer . Dufy also excels in the composition of decorations and stage costumes for the French Comédie. In its tables, it gradually gives up broad band of colors for a dominant overall color.

Jean Cocteau publishes in 1948 a book on Raoul Dufy in the collection “the Masters of the drawing” (Flammarion Editions).

Dufy illustrates the terrestrial Nourritures of André Gide in 1949, then the Herbarium of Colette (1950). It is promoted with the rank of commander of the Légion of honor.

With the Museum of Art and History of Geneva, 261 works, as well as ceramics, tapestries, books are gathered in 1952. In addition 41 works are sent by France to the Biennale de Venise. It gains the Price of Painting and the amount offers some to an Italian painter and Charles Lapicque so that they can remain one in France and the other in Venice. The painter Alfred Manessier will be the last French to obtain this price. Dufy settles with Forcalquier in High Provence.

It is there that he dies on March 23rd, 1953. Its last words were to require of its secretary to open the shutters of its room to see the mountain. After a provisional burial, the town of Nice offers a site to the cemetery of Cimiez in 1956.

The art of Raoul Dufy

The Impressionism

Raoul Dufy is subject to initially the influence of Eugene Boudin and Impressionism, but it does not retain of it the key in comma : his becomes on the other hand increasingly broad and vigorous, as one can see it in the beach of Holy-Addresses (1904) and After the lunch (1905-1906). It is necessary to underline an early control of the Aquarelle, and already of the indices of its future own style in a work as the 14 July 1998 in Le Havre where the colors are supplemented with the Indian ink.

The Fauvisme

Raoul Dufy discovers Matisse and Signac. In the place of the village (1906), the pinks and the greens are taken in rather thick features underlining architectures. The shades are frank. A small French flag in a still impressionist sky announces the bright colors of the pavoized streets of Le Havre, which it will paint in company of Marquet.

In the port of Le Havre (1906), smoke of the boats is traversed quiverings and undulations which will be accentuated thereafter in the clean style of Dufy. The white spots of the hangars and the boats come, with some French flags, to clarify a unit still a little too dull to be truly fawn-coloured.

On the other hand, the Nu pink with the green armchair (Claudine of back) (1906) is of invoice very clearly fauvist. The pallet is close to that of Matisse of the Intérieurs of or the green line (Portrait of Mrs Matisse) of 1905. It is necessary to notice the secondary plans treated by broad and parallel keys, which make think of Cézanne, although Dufy does not have yet a good knowledge of the work of this painter.

“In the Naked pink with the green armchair or Claudine of back of 1906, in Annonciade with Saint-Tropez, Dufy, of which it is probably the only naked one of this period, erects scaffolding of the plans simplified of shade and light on the contorsionné body of the model which it subjects to his imagination of the form. This broad spot of light which covers its back, and the ambiguous play of the plated red blood stone legs answers the clear arabesque of the arm. This naked is a prowess; what the drawing loses in sensuality, it gains it in coloured expressive force” (Pierre Cabanne, the freedom of the drawing and the imagination of the color , Catalog exposure “Raoul Dufy, another glance” of 2003, Musée Maillol in Paris and Musée of the Art schools of Nice).

In the backgrounds of the swing (1905-1906), the key in sticks makes think of certain Vincent van Gogh of Provence.

The Cubism cézannien

In 1907, Dufy can admire the paintings of Cézanne at the time of the retrospective to the Living room of Fall. In order to include/understand Cézanne on the very reasons as it painted, it leaves for the Estaque with Georges Braque, another Native of Le Havre of adoption, which attended the same council school of the Art schools as Friesz and Dufy.

In Estaque (1908), the forms, just suggested by blue lines in the distances, recall the Montagne Holy-Victoire of Cézanne of maturity. The houses of the Village at the edge of the sea (1908) are reduced to a simple geometry.

The keys are “cézanniennes” (oblique and posed with the brush punt), tons them are contrasted little. The Arbre in Estaque (1908) of Dufy could have been signed by the Georges Braque Maisons in Estaque (1908). Squared like pieces of rock, the houses of Directs and of Dufy, are hardly more mineral than the sky, the sea or the trees. As for Cézanne, the true subject of their tables is volume and the depth. However Dufy will rather quickly escape worms from other research, whereas Braque sought to develop and exhaust the resources of the geometrization of the reasons.

“ Arbres in Estaque , which is with the Cantini museum in Marseilles, belongs to a series of researches of volumes broken up into superimposed geometrical plans framed by parallel trunks, sometimes inflected in warheads which balance their fitting. The harmony of ochers and greens, the barrels and the gray branches of the trees, are voluntarily sober. Direct, which carries out at its sides a similar series, is also maintained in this simple geometrism and this austerity. It is the internal structure of the things that both continue, But Dufy will not be let lock up in the diagram cézannien which Braque will explore. ” ( Article quoted , p.17).

Raoul Dufy will not come very close to even almost abstraction of the synthetic cubism. There remains attached to the legibility of its fabrics. Its colors gain in glare and diversity. It is possible that Dufy influenced Picasso which often took up on its account the ideas other painters. the cage of birds (1923) of the Spanish painter present many relationships with the cage of bird (1913-1914), to the title of the work which differs only by one plural. But whereas at Picasso the color is interdependent of the feature, the flat tints of Dufy are essential without relationship necessary to a drawing allusive, rudimentary, “simple graphic abbreviations”, written Pierre Cabanne ( Ouvrage quoted ).

Raoul Dufy such as in itself

Approximately 3000 fabrics, 6000 large Watercolour S, 6000 drawings, of wood engraved, the Lithography S, the Tapestry S, the fabrics… And how much works destroyed by him! Dufy did not tend to all to preserve, like Picasso.

1913 are the pivotal year and the large bather with the massive forms is a good-bye with the Cubisme. With the background of its massive body, treated like an articulation of cylindrical parts, a landscape reduced to volumes is staged but whose many houses constitute a prefiguration of the sights of Vence.

In the abandoned garden (1913), the clean style of Raoul Dufy is almost set up: bright colors determining of the relatively arbitrary zones to which the drawings of the various elements are added again.

Dufy realizes that, for the eye, the colors do not belong indéfectiblement to a thing: in fact qualities would not have an existence out a substance. They have their own life, overflow the objects, and that especially in the experiment of the perception of the movement. From where the use of what Pierre Cants calls “ the puddle pools of juxtaposed colors ”. Dissociation between the color and the drawing is sometimes very thorough, and Dufy often installs the objects reduced to a contour on three or four broad coloured beaches.

The Aquarelle, the Gouache, which takes more and more importance after 1930, make it more possible to him to continue this experiment. The “puddle pools” of the bottom are extended on a paper beforehand wet and tended on a drawing board. When they are dry, it draws with the fine brush the various objects of the reason. the beautiful summer (1940) is a remarkable example. This technique requires a very great insurance, acquired by the ceaseless practice of the Dessin.

“ the watercolours of Raoul Dufy is the life even, exaltées under the glance of a genious creator and realized with a saving in means. They are fluid but never fuzzy. They are swift but nonhasty. Often carried out in twenty minutes, they are large many preliminary tests drawn aside by the Master for the benefit of the last of them (...). They are profuses but noncharged. They are transparent and not mièvres, because of the firmness of the attack (...) ” Marcelle Berr de Turique, friend and biographer of Dufy, quoted in the catalog of the exposure of 2003, p.13

Its drawings testify moreover than of the skill. And even if, as brings back it Fanny Guillon-Laffaille, “ it sometimes happened to him to draw with the two hands at the same time ” (Catalog of 2003, p. 13), the art of Dufy does not hold in a simple virtuosity containing in oneself only its interest. It is the result of a ceaseless work crowned by the genius which never the facility explains. The hand obeys a scrutinizing and fast glance. At first sight, its drawings seem excavated, even overloaded, but a little attention reveals that Dufy went right to essence. We initially believe to deal with a work Baroque, and we see quickly that greatest simplicity, the saving in means can give the feeling of the richness and almost of exhaustiveness. Corn fields, portraits, grids of parks, naked, bouquets of anemones, foliages: some features return presents the heart of the things.

In the full orchestra (Indian ink of 1936), double basses and violoncellos, large case and drums are the subject of a precise drawing. Is this a chance? Dufy comes from a family where the music held a very great importance. However these serious sounds, these “ paternal voices ” support of their force and their depth the stunt-flying of the agreements emanating of the other instruments. Those are suggested, stylized by fast features. The successive layouts are left in place: they are not corrected awkwardnesses, it is the object which exceeds its inertia and becomes one quivering existence under the hand of Dufy. The violins, coppers benefit from the exactitude of returned double basses: Dufy understands that under too many details, the life would be choked. The musicians are reduced to the oval of their heads: one does not go to the concert to look at a gallery of portraits.

The love of life and to reveal the life supports each table, each gouache, each drawing. Dufy walks a glance filled with wonder on the world and invites us to a festival which does not have anything surface and of society man. “ If I could express all the joy which is in me! ” said it. It largely reached that point, and little works are such an invitation to walk on towards a horizon of happiness.

Some Works

  • 1926, the pier and the walk of Nice , oil on fabric, 38*46,5 cm, MAM, Paris, France
  • 1928, Interior with the open windows , oil on fabric, 66*82 cm
  • 1928, Ceres with the sea , watercolour, 52*65,5 cm
  • 1930, Regattas with the gulls , oil on fabric, 73*92 cm, MAM, Paris, France
  • 1930, Regattas with Henley , oil on fabric, 54x65 cm
  • 1933, Races with Deauville , watercolour, 50,5*66 cm
  • 1943, Our house with Montsaunès , watercolour, 50*65 cm

External bonds

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