Raoul DUFY (French, 1877-1953) Lot n° 10

La Régate à Henley, 1930-35 Oil on canvas, signed lower left 25 3/8 x 31 7/8 in. - 64.6 x 81 cm. This work is accompanied by a photo-certificate n° P96-273 issued by Fanny Guillon-Lafaille March 8th, 1996 and will be included in the second supplement of Raoul Dufy catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint. Provenance Estate of the artist Galerie André Weil, Paris, acquired in 1955. "The color captures the light that forms and animates the group as a whole. Every object or group of objects is placed within its own area of light and shade, receiving its share of reflections and being subjected to the arrangement decided by the artist" R. Dufy Raoul Dufy came to Paris in 1900 and it was not long before the influence of Eugène Boudin and the Impressionists was felt on his work. Like many other artists before him he painted around the Havre, avoiding the typical comma-shaped brushstroke of the movement, favoring instead a wider and more vigorous touch. At the 1905 Salon des Indépendants he was left in awe in front of Matisse's Luxe, calme et volupté. He turned to Fauvism and started using bright colors and swift brushstrokes. From there, he moved on to explore Cézanne Cubism, a style characterized by an oblique touch and softly contrasting colors. He studied volume and depth, always bearing in mind the clarity of his canvas, as opposed to Braque who embraced the near-abstract quality of Synthetic Cubism. He began to use brighter and more varied colors. In order to illustrate this technique, Dufy recounted a striking visual phenomenon: as he stood one day watching a little girl in a red dress running along the Havre harbor, he noticed that as she ran, color was left behind her moving silhouette. Thus "shape-movement" and "color-light" no longer appeared as two distinct notions. The artist realized that the eye colors are not confined to a single object. They leak out of these objects and have a life of their own, as seen in the perception of movement.