Nachum Gutman Lot n° 33

was one of the founders of Israeli art. In the 1920s he and other modernist painters such as Reuven Rubin and Pinchas Litvinovsky were greatly attracted to the Oriental lure of the newly discovered land its houses outdoor culture and types. Unlike other modernist painters the Oriental flavor continued to be a major force in his art throughout his life both in the motifs he used and in his strongly decorative style. One of the recurring themes in Gutman's art is the open carriage taking famous people young women or couples on tour. These range from the Carriage of Count Montefiore in the famous Bialik Street Mosaic in Tel-Aviv; to people traveling in a carriage to one of the many orange groves that dotted the area around the town and to a barouche waiting in front of the Bella-Vista Hotel in Jaffa (below). Influenced by jovial Mediterranean scenes in Raoul Duffy's paintings Gutman found a ready supply of motifs in this artist's works both in the theme of the open air carriage as in the use of narrow openings to overlook distant marine landscapes. These motifs are incorporated in the painting in Gutman's characteristic style where colors are diluted as if they were watercolor so as to give a light-hearted atmosphere corresponding to the ?lighter subjects' treated. The lure of the Orient is no less present in this late 1940s painting on sale because of the lighter treatment of the subject. The decorated carriage driven by a ?tarbushed' charioteer set against the background of orange and pink house facades in Jaffa is strongly flavoured both in style and subject by the Orient. The slow undulating movement created by the carriage in motion or the decorative criss-cross ornament on the façade are strongly evocative of the Orient. The boat stranded out at sea above which hangs a full moon would seem to complete the Mediterranean atmosphere of the painting as if hinting that the bustle of the Oriental city would come to a halt when it arrived in port. Then even the curious