Albert Marquet in the Crosshairs of Collectors

Promenade sur la jetée de Sainte-Adresse (Walk on the Jetty at Sainte-Adresse), which fetched €279,565, recalls Albert Marquet’s stay in Normandy, where he spent the summer of 1906 with Raoul Dufy. Together they painted Le Havre—of which Sainte-Adresse is the seaside resort—Fécamp, Dieppe, Trouville and Honfleur. The year before Marquet took part in the Fauves’ aesthetic revolution, but in this painting he already softened his palette. The brushstrokes making the sea shimmer still contrast with each other, but they are nuanced. The high-angle view, which Marquet enjoyed using, heightens the perspective effect created by the composition’s diagonal lines. Like notes on a score, the people leaning on the balustrade give the peaceful landscape rhythm and poetry.

Bernard Buffet’s 1959 Tulipes jaunes sur un entablement (Yellow Tulips on a Shelf) fetched €188,485, the auction’s second-highest price. The canvas illustrates one of Buffet’s favorite lifelong themes (81 x 100 cm/ 31.89 x 39.38 in). Moïse Kisling’s 1928 Jeune enfant au chapeau bleu (Young Child with a Blue Hat, 73 x 51 cm/28.75 x 20.08 in) obtained €101,200. The sale also included bronzes, starting with François Pompon’s 1930 Ara, which sold for €110,055. A posthumous Valsuani cast, it has a nuanced brown patina (86 x 21.4 x 18 cm/33.86 x 8.43 x 7.09 in). Auguste Zamoyski’s Head of Antoni Stonimski tripled its estimate at €75,900. The Formist sculptor immortalized the Polish writer’s face in 1923. This bronze version with a gilded patina is also a posthumous Valsuani cast (16 x 25 cm/6.3 x 9.85 in).