Adolphe Joseph T.Monticelli (Marseille 1824-1... Lot n° 50

(Marseille 1824–1886) Madame Dufour in her kitchen, signed J. Monticelli, oil on wood, 47.8 x 36.8 cm, framed Three exhibition labels on the reverse: Exposition Monticelli / Juillet-Aout 1959/ Nr 5 / Galerie Lucien Blanc / Aix en Provence Exposition Monticelli / Musée Cantini – 19, Rue Grignan-Marseille / Nom de l’Expediteur: A. Delpiano, 8 Rue Jean Daumas-Cannes / titre de l’Ouvrage: femme devant une table de cuisine, numero 164 du catalogue (handwritten) Expos: Monticelli: Tokyo 1971 Catal. nr... as well as a label with the no. 164 Provenance: Formerly collection Alfred Delpiano The picture shows the kitchen of Madame Dufour, wife of the horse dealer Alphonso Dufour. The Dufours looked after Monticelli’s dog Fistou for years, and as a thank you he painted numerous pictures for them. Madame Dufour was not very fond of Monticelli’s works and as soon as her husband died, she sold his paintings to another horse dealer, Marius Delpiano. Marius Delpiano was one of Monticelli’s first collectors. After acquiring the Dufour collection, he put on a Monticelli exhibition in Cannes in 1980 and began dealing in art and antiques. His son Alfred Delpiano kept the best works for his private collection, which was dismantled in Nice in 1963-65. Adolphe Joseph Thomas Monticelli was a pupil of Rey and August Raymond Aubert. He sojourned in Paris in 1847/49, in 1851 he spent time in Marseille (with some trips to Béziers, Montpellier, Nimes, etc.), returning to Paris in 1856, where he became friends with N. Diaz. He was on his way to becoming a European celebrity, when in 1870 the threatening siege of Paris caused him to return to Marseille. From that point on, he worked in poor conditions and went unnoticed in the art world. Initially precise in his drawings, he soon replaced the classicist form of his Art Nouveau taste with a refined painterly style focussing on a harmony of colours and surfaces with vanishing contours (influenced by