Raoul Dufy (French, 1877-1953) "Les Maronniers",... Lot 11

Raoul Dufy (French, 1877-1953) "Les Maronniers", 1928 Oil on canvas titled and dated on an exhibition label on the back. Signed lower left. Exhibition labels on the stretcher on the back: "N11 - Collection de Mr R. Dufy Les Maronniers", label of the Parisian packer Charles Pottier: "26 Kunsthalle Basel 1938 R Dufy 2.5.38". Various numbers, including: "37" in paint, "18" in ink, "1280-0192" on a black plate, "BA01009" on a label, Mention "Zacks" in white chalk, customs stamp. Provenance : - collection Raoul Dufy, 1938 - collection Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Zachs, Toronto - gallery Pierre Matisse, New York, 1956 - private collection - sale, Christie's, New York, 13 November 2021, n°784. Certificate of Mrs Fanny Guillon-Laffaille, member of the French Union of Professional Experts in Works of Art and Collectibles. Exhibition: - Basel, Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Vlaminck, R. Dufy, Rouault, from May 14 to June 12, 1938. - San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Los Angeles County Museum, Raoul Dufy, May-September 1954, p. 39, no. 35. Bibliography: - Pierre Courthion, "Raoul Dufy", Geneva, Pierre Cailler, 1951, work reproduced in color p. 80. - Raymond Cogniat, "Raoul Dufy", New-York, Crown publisher, 1962, work reproduced on the first plate. - Maurice Laffaille, "Catalogue Raisonné de l'Œuvre Peint de Raoul Dufy" tome III, Motte edition, Geneva, 1972-1977, work titled "L'avenue du bois" and reproduced under n°967, p. 37. The "Pink Palace", located at 40 avenue du Bois de Boulogne in Paris - now n°50 avenue Foch - which can be seen in the background of a powerful geometric composition, is the real subject of our painting. The walkers and other readers are only a pretext to pay homage to the home of one of the richest heiresses of the early 20th century: the American Anna Gould (1875-1961). It took her and her first husband, Count Boniface de Castellane, six years to build the Pink Palace, inspired by the Trianon. Inaugurated in 1902, the couple received up to 2,000 guests at the reception given in honor of the Spanish sovereigns three years later. Only the splendor of the parties of Baron Alexis de Redé, at the Hotel Lambert, rivals that of the Palais Rose. Remarried in 1908 to the Duke of Talleyrand, Anna Gould became Princess of Sagan and the Palais Rose enjoyed a quieter life until the departure of its owner on the eve of the Second World War. Judged "without archaeological value", it was destroyed in the summer of 1969, giving our Dufy canvas, painted forty-one years earlier, the status of ultimate relic of one of the most brilliant testimonies of the Paris of the Belle Époque. Its reproduction, as early as 1962, on the cover of one of the first posthumous monographs devoted to the artist, attests to its importance in Dufy's work. The creative gesture is indeed delivered in full transparency, with a line of drawing extremely free and dissociated from the color, which is applied by "juxtaposed puddles". This chromatic exploration represents the synthesis of post-impressionism and Cézanne cubism dear to the artist, whose fingerprint is even found on our canvas, as if to better apprehend the painting in all its depth.