 |
|
|
|
TITLE:
|
Village sous la neige
|
|
|
|
|
|
WORK DATE:
|
1925
|
|
|
|
CATEGORY:
|
Paintings
|
|
|
|
MATERIALS:
|
Oil on canvas
|
|
|
|
MARKINGS:
|
Signed lower left: Vlaminck
|
|
|
|
SIZE:
|
27 x 33 inches (68.58 x 83.82 cm)
Framed: 34.75 x 40.75 inches
|
|
|
|
STYLE:
|
Modern
|
|
|
|
PRICE*:
|
Contact Gallery for Price
|
|
|
|
|
|
DESCRIPTION:
|
Born on the rue Pierre Liscot, near Les Halles, Vlaminck was raised by his Flemish-Catholic father and Protestant mother from Lorraine; both parents were musicians. At age three, Vlaminck and his family moved to Le Vesinet to live with his maternal grandmother. In 1892, Vlaminck acquired his first racing cycle, which replaced his aging bicycle; eventually he planned to make a living as a professional cyclist.
In 1893, he took drawing lessons from an M. Robichon, and also painted on the Ile de Chatou with Henri Rigal. Vlaminck married Suzanne Berly in 1894. To support his family he gave violin lessons and raced professionally, but after contracting typhoid fever in 1896, he was forced to end his cycling career. In November of the same year, he began his military service at Vitre in Brittany, where he served as a musician in the 70th Regiment. On June 18, 1900, during one of his fifteen-day leaves, Vlaminck met Andre Derain. Vlaminck eventually rented a studio with Derain in the abandoned hotel-restaurant, Levanneur, on the Ile-de-Chatou.
During the Fauvist movement, Vlaminck remained mostly in and around Chatou, exhibiting his work alongside that of the other Fauve artists at the Salon des Independants and d'Automne. About 1908 his palette grew increasingly blue and brown and his forms became distinctly "Cezannesque."
In 1925, he began to travel throughout France, a practice he continued each year, although the vast majority of his work was done in the suburbs of Paris along the Seine. His work made before and after World War II consists principally of landscapes and still-lifes, characterized by a dark palette and thick strokes of paint enlivened by touches of white. He published dozens of autobiographical books, containing considerable exaggerations about his life and his relations with other artists.
In Village sous la neige, Vlaminck presents the viewer with a view of the empty streets of a snowbound village. The midnight blue sky filled with dashes of white indicating clouds seems to indicate the impending threat of another snowstorm. The darkened windows and empty streets seem to represent a period of hibernation for this small village in the dead of winter. Though the scene has a certain bleakness, therein is where its beauty lies – this is a powerful painting that is not straightforward or merely pretty.
|
|
|
PROVENANCE:
|
Private collection, NY
|
|
|
|
|
LITERATURE:
|
This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné by the Wildenstein Institute.
|
|
|
|
EXHIBITION HISTORY:
|
New York, Hammer Galleries, 19th and 20th Century European Collection 2006, June-August, 2006, pgs. 38-39, illustrated.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Get email alerts about this artist!