“Coquillages au bord de la mer”

Medium	Oil on canvas
Signed	Signed lower left
Size	12.50" × 19.00" (31.8cm × 48.3cm)
Framed Size	21.50" × 28.00" (54.6cm × 71.1cm)
Dated	c. 1948
Condition	Very good condition
Provenance	Private collection - United States
Literature	The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Mnr. Jacques Bailly. A photo certificate of authenticity from Mnr. Jacques Bailly accompanies the work.

Summary

The subject here is deceptively simple — seashells on a shore, the Mediterranean beyond — but what Jean Dufy (1888–1964) does with it is anything but. The shells are painted with a chromatic exuberance that transforms them from natural objects into something close to jewels: spirals of red, blue, green and white applied in rapid, flickering strokes that catch the light differently at every angle, the colours dancing against the warm ochre of the sand and the cool turquoise of the sea behind. Look at the water. It is built from small, varied marks — pale blue, green, white — each one independent, none of them blended, the whole surface alive with movement and light in the way that only paint applied with complete freedom can achieve. This is the technique Dufy developed over decades of looking at the Mediterranean: not the Impressionist dissolving of form into atmosphere, but something more energetic and more joyful, colour used as pure sensation. The shells themselves are the pivot of the composition. The large conch at the centre — warm amber and cream, its interior rendered in deep purples and blacks — is painted with more deliberate care than the spiralled shells around it, which are handled almost as calligraphic marks, the brush moving quickly across their surfaces to suggest rather than describe their complexity. The seashell was a subject close to both Dufy brothers. Jean returned to it throughout his career; his brother Raoul's own Coquillages au bord de la mer is held in the collection of the Centre Pompidou in Paris — a reminder that this most lyrical of subjects ran deep in the family's imagination. Jean Dufy was born in Le Havre in 1888 and spent his career in Paris among a circle that included Braque, Picasso and Apollinaire. His work is held in the Musée National d'Art Moderne at the Centre Pompidou, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Albertina in Vienna.

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