THE PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE FAMILY COLLECTION FROM A KNIGHTSBRIDGE RESIDENCE
Lot 58AR
RAOUL DUFY(1877-1953)Étude pour 'Les nourritures terrestres' d'André Gide
20 April 2023, 16:00 BST
London, New Bond StreetSold for £7,650 inc. premium
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RAOUL DUFY (1877-1953)
Étude pour 'Les nourritures terrestres' d'André Gide
stamped with the artist's initials 'RD' (lower right)
gouache and watercolour on paper
19.5 x 24cm (7 5/8 x 9 7/16in).
Executed circa 1950
stamped with the artist's initials 'RD' (lower right)
gouache and watercolour on paper
19.5 x 24cm (7 5/8 x 9 7/16in).
Executed circa 1950
Footnotes
Provenance
Neffe-Degandt Fine Arts, London.
Lumley Cazalet Gallery, London.
Private collection, London.
Exhibited
Tokyo, Galerie Nichido, Raoul Dufy, 19 – 30 March 1991, no. 37.
London, J.P.L. Fine Arts, Raoul Dufy, Paintings, Watercolours and Drawings, 25 March – 22 May 1992, no. 18.
Literature
F. Guillon-Laffaille, Raoul Dufy, Catalogue raisonné aquarelles et gouaches, online catalogue, no. As-1476 (illustrated).
The present work was executed as a study for one of the illustrations Raoul Dufy completed for André Gide's prose-poem, Les nourritures terrestres ('The fruits of the earth'). First published in 1897, Gide's multi-faceted text comprised travel anecdotes, philosophical musings and pseudo-narrative fragments inspired by his wanderings in North Africa. Les nourritures terrestres took its thematic cue from Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, thence influencing a younger generation of existentialist writers such as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. Dufy's illustrations for the text comprise poetic, fleeting impressions of the scenes Gide imagined and encountered as a wandering flâneur, including ancient ruins, rustic environments and mythological beings.