“Villefranche-Sur-Mer”

Medium	Watercolour on paper
Signed	Signed lower right and dated
Size	20.00" × 24.00" (50.8cm × 61.0cm)
Framed Size	30.00" × 34.00" (76.2cm × 86.4cm)
Dated	1926
Condition	Very good condition
Provenance	Private collection - Coconut Grove , United States Galerie Jacques Bailly - Paris 2002 This work is accompanied by a photo certificate from Mnr. Jacques Bailly dated 5th July 2002 and is included in the catalogue raisonne of the painters work Vol III

Summary

The harbour at Villefranche seen from the water, the ochre and rose houses of the old town climbing the hillside in tiers above the quay, their tiled roofs drawn in quick loops of red-brown wash. Along the waterfront a row of beached boats lies with nets spread across the sand, fishermen working over them, while further along a party sits at a café table beneath the terrace steps and small figures stroll the promenade under the plane trees. Everything is drawn first in a nervous, running pen line — red-brown for the architecture, blue and black for the figures — and colour is then floated across it in thin, unbounded washes of blue, green, coral and ochre that refuse to stay inside the drawing. The paper is left bare through much of the foreground, which is what makes the picture breathe. It is Dufy at his most fluent: a whole harbour town described in perhaps two hundred marks. The younger brother of Raoul, Jean Dufy was born at Le Havre and was largely self-taught, working as a shipping clerk and then designing for Théodore Haviland at Limoges. He exhibited at the Salon d'Automne from 1920 and showed with Berthe Weill, Jos. Hessel, Barreiro and Drouant-David in Paris, and in the United States with Hammer Galleries, the Chase Gallery in New York and James Vigeveno in Los Angeles. Ports were among his lifelong subjects — Honfleur, the Île d'Yeu, Marseille, Le Havre and Villefranche. His work is in the Musée National d'Art Moderne, the Art Institute of Chicago and MoMA.

£26,500.00

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