Подпись "Soutine" вверху справа.
Выставки:
Сан-Франциско, Palace of Fine Arts, Golden Gate International Exposition.
Contemporary European Paintings, 1940, № 701.
Вильямстаун, Williams College (and travelling), Twenty Twentieth Century Paintings, 1940-41.
Нью-Йорк, The Museum of Modern Art &Cleveland, Museum of Art, Soutine, 1950-51,
иллюстрация в каталоге (датируется 1929).
Портленд, Art Museum; Seattle, Art Museum; San Francisco, California Palace of the
Legion of Honor; Los Angeles, County Museum; Minneapolis, Institute of Arts; St.
Louis, City Art Museum; Kansas City, William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art; Detroit,
Institute of Arts &Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Paintings from the Collection of Walter
P. Chrysler, Jr., 1956-57, № 99, иллюстрация в каталоге (датируется 1929).
Provincetown, Chrysler Art Museum, Inaugural Exhibition, 1958, № 59, иллюстрация в каталоге.
Dayton, Art Institute, French Paintings, 1789-1929, from the Collection of Walter P.
Chrysler, Jr., 1960, no. 120, иллюстрация в каталоге.
Provincetown, Chrysler Art Museum &Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, The
Controversial Century: 1850-1950. Paintings from the Collection of Walter P. Chrysler,
Jr., 1962, иллюстрация в каталоге.
Buffalo, Albright-Knox Art Gallery &Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland, The
Armand Hammer Collection: Four Centuries of Masterpieces, 1978, no. 52, цветная иллюстрация в каталоге (датируется 1929).
Oslo, National Gallery of Norway, The Armand Hammer Collection: From Rembrandt to
Picasso, 1978-79, no. 52, цветная иллюстрация в каталоге.
Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, The Armand Hammer Collection: From Rembrandt to
Chagall, 1979, no. 52, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, The Armand Hammer Collection: Four Centuries of
Masterpieces, 1979-80, № 55, цветная иллюстрация в каталоге.
Los Angeles, County Museum of Art; Washington, D.C., Corcoran Gallery and School
of Art; West Palm Beach, Norton Gallery and School of Art; Cincinnati, Art Museum;
Lexington, University of Kentucky Art Museum; Beijing, China Art Gallery; West
Virginia, Huntington Galleries; Los Angeles, County Museum of Art; Budapest, Fine
Arts Museum of Hungary; Sofia, National Gallery of Art; Belgrade, National Museum;
Prague, National Gallery of Art; Tulsa, Philbrook Art Center; Los Angeles, County
Museum of Art &Jerusalem, Israel Museum, The Armand Hammer Collection: Five
Centuries of Masterpieces, 1980-85, № 50, иллюстрация в каталоге.
Albuquerque Museum &Alabama, Birmingham Museum of Art, The Armand Hammer
Collection, 1985, № 50, цветная иллюстрация в каталоге.
West Palm Beach, Norton Gallery and School of Art &Palm Springs, Desert Museum,
The Armand Hammer Collection: Five Centuries of Masterpieces, 1985-86, № 123,
цветная иллюстрация в каталоге.
Chaïm Soutine, Le groom, circa 1925, oil on canvas, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Париж, рис. 2.
Chaïm Soutine, Le Pâtissier au mouchoir rouge, circa 1922-23, oil on canvas, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2010, рис. 3.
Picture Gallery; Odessa, Fine Art Museum; Kiev, State Museum of Ukrainian Fine Arts
&Tbilisi, State Museum of the Georgian S.S.R., The Armand Hammer Collection: Five
Centuries of Masterpieces, 1986-87, no. 123, цветная иллюстрация в каталоге.
Louisville, J.B. Speed Art Museum, The Armand Hammer Collection, 1987, no. 123,
цветная иллюстрация в каталоге.
Holyoke, Heritage State Park, Selected Works of the Armand Hammer Collection,
1987, no. 123, цветная иллюстрация в каталоге.
West Palm Beach, The Norton Museum of Art (on loan 2007-09).
Литература:
Waldemar George, Artistes juifs: Soutine, Париж, 1928, иллюстрация.
Elie Faure, 'Sutin', in Musaion, Прага, 1929-30, иллюстрация стр. 101.
Maurice Sachs, 'Soutine', in Creative Art, vol. 11, no. 4, New York, December 1932,
иллюстрация стр. 277.
Alfred Werner, 'Chaim Soutine: Self-Liberation Through Art', in Chicago Jewish Forum,
vol. 10, no. 3, Chicago, Spring 1952, иллюстрация стр. 177.
'Living with the Great', in Vogue, 1 октября 1952, стр. 118
'The Chrysler Collection', in Arts, т. 30, № 6, март 1956, иллюстрация стр. 35.
Marcellin Castaing &Jean Leymarie, Soutine, Paris &Lausanne, 1963, илл. вставка XVI.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, French Paintings, Нью-Йорк, 1967, т. III, стр. 244.
Pierre Courthion, Soutine. Peintre du déchirant, Лозанна, 1972, рис. B, иллюстрация стр. 267.
John Walker (ed.), The Armand Hammer Collection. Five Centuries of Masterpieces,
Нью-Йорк, 1980, № 53, цветная иллюстрация.
Maurice Tuchman, Esti Dunow &Klaus Perls, Chaim Soutine, Catalogue Raisonné,
Кельн, 1993, Т. II, № 104, цветная иллюстрация стр. 667.
CATALOGUE NOTE
Portraying a young boy, only identified by his valet uniform, Le Valet de chambre
epitomises Soutine's portraiture of the middle and late 1920s, characterised by a great
expressiveness of pose, rhythmically charged brushstrokes and strong colour contrasts.
Regardless of the age, social status, or the artist's personal involvement with the sitter,
Soutine's portraits are imbued with a strong physical presence, as well as with a
uniqueness and individuality of his subjects. As the authors of the Catalogue raisonné
of Soutine's work have commented: 'While his portraits do convey inner realities and
make spiritual statements, they are primarily rooted in concrete perception. Though
Soutine may project his inner turbulence and most personal feelings onto his subjects,
the viewer never loses sight of a particular physical entity being carefully observed and
experienced. Even the distortions and exaggerations of facial features and the shiftings
and dislocations of body parts do not destroy the essential recognition in each painting
of a certain person and a reality specific to him or her' (M. Tuchman, E. Dunow &K.
Perls, op. cit., p. 509).
Whilst Soutine occasionally painted portraits of his friends, fellow artists, patrons and
several self-portraits, he usually preferred to depict anonymous sitters. The people,
whom the artist encountered in everyday life, were identified by their professions and
uniforms, such as page boys (fig. 1), valets and pastry chefs (fig. 2). This shift from
portraying people from his own social circle towards less known figures parallels that of
his close friend and fellow artist Amedeo Modigliani who, having left Paris and moved to
the French Riviera, executed a number of portraits of children, peasants, servants and
shop girls. Le Valet de chambre bears resemblance, for example, to Modigliani's Le
Petit paysan (fig. 3): both are portraits of unidentified boys, seated frontally in a similar
Fig. 4
Vincent van Gogh, Le Facteur
Joseph Roulin, 1888, oil on
canvas, Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston
Fig. 5
Soutine at Le Blanc, 1926
Fig. 6
Soutine and Zborowski on
holiday in Vittel, late 1920s
plain interior, with mannerist, elongated facial features. Although both artists sought to
emphasise the emotional, inner state of their sitters, Soutine's boy, rendered in quick,
sharp brushstrokes, reflects a sense of angst and unease, Modigliani's portrait has a
dreamy, melancholic atmosphere.
'Soutine generally chose anonymous figures as models. But as much as his characters
may become types, they never give up their identities as particular people. Soutine's
insistence on the physical particularity of his subject, together with this move towards
more anonymous sitters, demonstrates his resistance to completely losing himself in
the subjective aspects of the portrait experience. This resistance to a complete union
between painter and model is also felt in the way Soutine's figures "pose" before him
and us, open to our penetrating scrutiny, but somehow indifferent to the artist's
presence [...]. It is the tension between their seeming detachment, on the one hand,
and an awareness of Soutine's personal involvement with them, on the other, that
heightens the expressive charge of these figures' (ibid., pp. 509-510).
Although Soutine painted a wide range of sitters throughout his career, the formal
arrangements of these portraits remained consistent: his sitters are usually rendered
seated, occasionally standing, in half-length or three-quarter-length pose. These
figures, often facing frontally and clothed in formal dress, create a sense of posing,
rather than a spontaneously captured likeness. Le Valet de chambre is no exception:
the boy is depicted frontally, seated on a stool facing the artist, dressed in his valet's
uniform. Another recurring feature is the elongated shape of the head, often with a long
nose, large protruding ears and deep, expressive eyes. The background, painted in
deep blue tones, is bare and, apart from describing an interior setting, does not offer
any clues as to the surrounding in which the sitter is depicted. This deliberate lack of
detail takes the viewer's focus away from the potential narrative of the painting, and
centres our attention to the physical and emotional power of the portrait. The energy
and expressive force of Le Valet de chambre is evocative of the angst-ridden selfportraits
of Van Gogh, as well as of his depictions of semi-anonymous sitters the artist
encountered in everyday life (fig. 4).
Le Valet de chambre belonged to a number of important collections, including Soutine's
first dealer Zborowski, the Chicago collector Leigh B. Block and Walter P. Crysler, Jr.
For many years the work was in the collection of Armand Hammer, the well known
Californian businessman and art collector, as well as a co-owner of the Hammer
Galleries in New York. The work remained in Hammer's possession until his death in
1990, during which time it was extensively exhibited as one of the masterpieces of the
collection. This and other works from his private collection formed the core of the
Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Culture Center in California, which opened to the
public in November 1990, only weeks before Hammer's death.
CONDITION REPORT:
The canvas is lined. There appears to be a repair to the canvas which runs down part of the left framing edge. This area does not fluoresce under ultra-violet light. There is a thin diagonal line of retouching across the figure's forehead, some fine lines of retouching filling in the craquelure on his cheek and chin, some fine lines of infilling in the red pigment of his waistcoat, and two small areas of retouching on the upper framing edge, visible under ultra-violet light. There may be some further retouchings beneath the varnish layer, which are not visible under ultra-violet light. Otherwise this work is in good condition.
Colours: Overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue illustration, although fresher, richer and more varied in the original.