Label
As a young artist Raoul Dufy closely emulated French Impressionism. He molded his style to Fauvism in 1905 after admiring Matisse’s Luxe, Calme et Volupté (“this miracle of creative imagination in colour and line.”) In 1906 and 1907 Dufy exhibited his work together with Henry Matisse, Georges Rouault, Maurice de Vlaminck, and Andre Derain – the Fauves (“Wild Beasts”) named for their violent use of non-descriptive color and revolt against established art.
In 1908 Dufy worked on location with Braque at L’Estaque, a beach previously painted by Cezanne. There the two abandoned Fauvism for a more sober style influenced by those earlier Cezanne works. These images contributed directly to the development of Cubism. An exhibition of the Dufy and Braque paintings at Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler gallery prompted the critic Vauxcelles to unsavorily remark on Braque that he “scorns form and reduces everything . . . to geometric schemas and cubes” – thus the origin of the term Cubism.
Dufy, though, had more interest in pure color and beach scenes themselves than geometry and quickly returned to his lighter, Fauvist-inspired mode. Perhaps too timid for further experimentation, he maintained this style to the end of his life – rapid, calligraphic drawing on backgrounds of light, thinly washed color. His works invariably have these sorts of subjects: yacht races, casinos, palm trees, racetracks, orchestras, and Southern French towns.
Acquired by Purdue in 1987, Baigneuse (“Bather”) characteristically has Dufy’s quick, sketchy contour-line quality embellished with some level of whimsy. In it a reclining bather in traditional pose lies in the foreground, apparently asleep or fantasizing. The image probably takes a cue from Surrealism, referring to a pleasurable dream or state of mind with its two over-large butterflies and sailing ships in the background.