MAURICE DE VLAMINCK

(1876-1958)

La forêt

Footnotes

This work is accompanied by an attestation from the Wildenstein Institute. This work will be included in the forthcoming Maurice de Vlaminck Digital Catalogue, currently being prepared under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, Inc.

Please note that this work has been requested for the exhibition Maurice de Vlaminck: Modern Artist Rebel at the Museum Barberini, Potsdam, 14 September 2024 – 12 January 2025.


Provenance
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Paris and Zurich, no. 68 (probably acquired directly from the artist); on consignment with Galerie Alfred Flechtheim, Dusseldorf, no. 616, subsequently with Galerie Paul Cassirer, Berlin, no. 17219, from 2 October 1919.
Private collection, Berlin and London (acquired in the 1920s).
Thence by descent to the present owner.

Exhibited
Dresden, Kunstsalon Emil Richter.
(Possibly) Dusseldorf, Städtischer Kunstpalast, Ausstellung des Sonderbundes Westdeutscher Kunstfreunde und Künstler, Düsseldorf 1910, 16 July - 9 October 1910, no. 182 (titled 'Der Wald').
(Possibly) Dusseldorf, Galerie Alfred Flechtheim, Wilhelm Kreis, Max Hünten, Manolo, De Vlaminck, 17 August - 6 September 1919, no. 43 (titled 'Der Wald').

'When painting I experienced a source of joy, a constantly renewed pleasure, an intense cerebral excitement... I was in communion with the sky, the trees, the clouds, with life... An unceasingly renewed but fleeting illusion... It was precisely that appearance, continually renewed, always ungraspable that I worked furiously at capturing, at fixing on the canvas in greens, yellows, blues and reds.' - M. de Vlaminck

Unseen in public for almost a century, La forêt is a luminescent example of Maurice de Vlaminck's liberal and emotional presentation of colour and the evolving modernisation of his style. At the same time the work has a history as rich as its palette, traversing the shifting tides of European art collecting and dealing in the 20th century. Passing through the hands of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Alfred Flechtheim and Paul Cassirer, before being taken to London following the rise of Nazi Germany, the provenance trajectory of the present work encapsulates some of the most fundamental developments in the history of art and of the world.

A chance meeting in July 1900, on the same suburban St Germain-en-Laye to Gare St Lazare rail line that had coincidentally brought together Paul Sérusier and Maurice Denis some ten years previously, gave birth to a blossoming friendship and to two of Fauvism's most ardent proponents: André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck: 'It is certain that if it had not been for that meeting... the idea would never have entered my mind to make 'Painting' my livelihood!' (M. de Vlaminck, Portraits avant décès, Paris, 1943, p. 13).

Together Derain and Vlaminck set up in Chatou, a quiet suburb of Paris, penniless, but nonetheless flush with a burning passion for their impending artistic endeavours. As Renoir and Monet had done in the summer of 1869, the pair worked on the banks of the Seine, inspiring one another in turn and ceaselessly conversing to generate a unique aesthetic. Over the 1900-1905 period, the 'School of Chatou' was born.

When apart, the two artists would continue their discussion via letter and Vlaminck kept the entire body of letters written to him by Derain, eventually giving them to the Musée de Chartres. These invaluable notes offer an important insight into the aesthetic development of Derain and, in turn, Vlaminck, offering a gauge on the exchange of ideas, discussion of aesthetics, and questionings that nourished and stimulated the relationship between the young artists.

Galerie Bernheim-Jeune's major exhibition of Vincent van Gogh in March 1901 was to have an unimaginably profound effect on Vlaminck, who was 'bowled over' by the Dutch artist's 'revolutionary direction, an almost religious feeling in his interpretation of nature' (M. de Vlaminck, op. cit., 1943, p. 31), an effect we see come to the fore through Vlaminck's later use of lengthened brushstrokes, to give form to his subjects. At this same exhibition, Derain introduced his friend and visionary accomplice to the third Fauve master of colour, Henri Matisse. Matisse later recalled to his son-in-law, Georges Duthuit, the exclamation of Vlaminck at this meeting: 'You see, you have to paint using pure cobalts, pure vermilions, pure Veronese greens!' (Matisse quoted in G. Duthuit, Les Fauves, Braque, Derain, Van Dongen, Dufy, Friesz, Manguin, Marquet, Matisse, Puy, Vlaminck, Geneva, 1949, p. 72).

Vlaminck's artistic output in the following years was as monumental as it was influential, ultimately creating an oeuvre of some 6,000 works. He was, however, constantly financially challenged in these early years. Juggling a young family and a voracious appetite for painting, he supplemented his salary as an evening musician by giving violin lessons. As he recalled later, 'I quite often went without the necessaries in order to be able to cover my canvases with colours, which I later scraped off so I could use them again. My most recurrent problem was that I lacked the money to buy tubes and stretchers!' (M. de Vlaminck, Le Ventre ouvert, Paris, 1937, p. 50).

This hardship prevented Vlaminck from travelling with Derain and Matisse to the South of France and discovering the light of the Midi. Instead, he remained in the regions along the Seine valley to the west of Paris, travelling by foot and by bicycle in search of the perfect place to paint en plein air. This did not matter for Vlaminck, for his relationship to the landscape, the motif, was instinctive and it was 'far from the intense southern light that Vlaminck's personal style rose to a level on which the colour exploded' (M. Vallès-Bled, Maurice de Vlaminck, La période fauve, 1900-1907, Paris, 2008, p. 37). His emotional and aesthetic attachment to the landscape drew comparisons to Cézanne, who was often drawn back to the views of Mont-Sainte Victoire and the gardens of Jas du Bouffan.

Some financial respite was to come later however, from his first dealer Ambroise Vollard. After the preliminary exhibitions of his Fauvist works, Vollard bought up much of his stock and made monthly purchases that allowed Vlaminck to live as a painter. He also played a crucial role in disseminating Vlaminck's works through the frequency of his purchases, his national and international sales and his loans to a wide number of exhibitions. To find himself in such a position however, Vlaminck had to first run the gauntlet of the 1905 Salon d'Automne, a Salon that would secure itself in the annals of art history.

'A tremendously bright room, of the most daring, the most extreme, of those whose intentions have to be decoded... At the centre of the room, the torso of a child and a small marble bust by Albert Marquet, whose modelling is a delicate science. The ingenuousness of these busts is striking, set amidst the orgy of pure colours: Donatello amongst the wild beasts' (L. Vauxcelles, 'Le Salon d'Automne', in Gil Blas, 17 October 1905).

Thenceforth Matisse, Derain and Vlaminck became known as les Fauves (wild beasts), proudly and defiantly adopting the sobriquet given at the infamous Salon. Now the Fauvists would continue their vivid journey with a new title and exacerbated purpose. As Vlaminck recalls: 'Fauvism was not an invention, an attitude. It was a way of being, acting, thinking, breathing' (M. de Vlaminck, op. cit., 1943, p. 38).

As with the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, landscape remained a prominent theme for the Fauvists, with each type of landscape demanding a different treatment to extract its full character. However, rather than focus on the effect of light to achieve this goal, the Fauvists celebrated it with colour, most importantly the unrestrained use of pigment, thickly and generously applied to their canvases, sculpting a lush, impasto surface. Through this liberation of colour, they made a critical step towards abstraction, away from representation.

The Fauve moment, however, was really over before it had begun, lasting from only 1905 to 1907, exploding onto the scene of twentieth century art and melting into it almost as quickly; though the impact it had on artists would last for generations to come. After the revelatory Cézanne retrospectives that were held by the Salon des Indépendants in spring 1907 and the Salon d'Automne in the following October, most of the avant-garde fell under the spell of the father of modernism and Vlaminck was no different. Cézanne encouraged artists to adopt a more volumetric, constructivist approach to form, forsaking the bright hues of Fauvism, redirecting their expression through more than just colour alone. Vlaminck, already questioning his approach and searching for a new path in his work, found answers.

It was not only revolutionary pictorial advancement that was discovered at these Salons and exhibitions, but also the Fauvists themselves, who gained the attention of a number of forward-thinking dealers, the most notable and influential of which was Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Few names in the canon of twentieth century art dealing are filled with such an influential payload as that of Kahnweiler. A shrewd businessman with a keen eye, his figure was immortalised in the 1910 painting by Pablo Picasso (currently housed in the Art Institute of Chicago Collection), but his legacy was far greater and wide reaching than Picasso's Cubist masterpiece.

The son of a prosperous Mannheim banking family, the young Kahnweiler arrived in Paris on 22 February 1907. During the April 1907 Salon des Indépendents, Kahnweiler invited Vlaminck to sell him some canvases, which he was greatly encouraged to do by Vollard. Later that year, in May 1907, he opened his gallery at 28 rue Vignon with purchases made from Braque, Friesz, Matisse, Picasso and Vlaminck.

Unlike many dealers or collectors, 'Kahnweiler was more interested in the artist that in individual paintings. This approach was reflected in his intention to assure himself of the exclusive sales rights of the artists he liked and whom he wished to protect' (P. Assouline, L'Homme de l'Art, D-H. Kahnweiler (1884-1979), Paris, 1988, p. 50). As such, he would often seek to buy up large numbers of works, allowing his artists to focus on their artistic practice, rather than painting to survive. Aside from allowing the painters to focus on their creative output, this also allowed Kahnweiler to disseminate their works more freely amongst his network of dealers, offering works on consignment via their galleries. A German by birth, but living in Paris, Kahnweiler was inherently intertwined with the modernising art market in Germany and two such dealers he had at the forefront of his connections, were the up-and-coming Jewish art connoisseur Alfred Flechtheim, in Dusseldorf, and the experienced Paul Cassirer in Berlin.

Flechtheim had only recently been persuaded to open a gallery of his own by Paul Cassirer in circa 1913, and he had infamously used his wife's dowry to buy a number of artworks for his stock. He was a pioneer of modern art dealing, his name synonymous with the French and German avant-garde artists, whom he championed through his gallery and his association with groups such as the Sonderbund. He made a conscious effort to include many works in public galleries across Germany, thus disseminating the radical and exciting art that was coming out of the contemporary exploration of emotion and representation by the artistic youth.

Flechtheim became a major conduit for Kahnweiler in Germany, exhibiting works for him and selling them on his behalf, utilising his influence amongst the artistic circles of rapidly modernising Germany. La forêt was one such work and its stretcher bears the very rare Flechtheim stamp on a plain label, more simplistic and less stylised than the later 'A' and elongated 'F' that would become synonymous with his dealership. From this, as well as the equally rare and early 'Henry Kahnweiler' label that sits to the right, we can assume that this work was a very early acquisition by Kahnweiler, likely directly from the artist himself, and that Kahnweiler very soon afterwards sent the work to Germany and to Flechtheim.

Similarly, confirmed by the label and matching stock card in the archives, on 2 October 1919 the present work was received by Paul Cassirer in Berlin, shortly after the end of the presumed exhibition of La forêt at Galerie Flechtheim. It had been sent by Kahnweiler who was at the time based in Switzerland after the French government seized his stock and forced him into exile during World War I.

Through the ongoing efforts of these dealers, works of the European avant-garde filtered into leading private and public collections across the world and La forêt was no exception. Likely from its time on the walls of Flechtheim and Cassirer, or likely mentioned in one of the many artistic periodicals of the time, it was noticed by a prominent art collecting family in Berlin who acquired the work in the 1920s. The true importance of the work became apparent during the turbulent upheaval of German Jewish families during the 1930s at the hands of the Nazi party, as it was brought to London when they chose to flee their flat in the attractive district of Grunewald, on the western edge of Berlin. A beloved family heirloom, La forêt remained a treasured possession for the family and has been part of their collection for almost 100 years.

The exciting provenance and history of La forêt is matched only by its relevance to Vlaminck's artistic development in 1907, as we are presented with a perfect maelstrom of ideas and narratives from that moment. Working his pigment onto the canvas, in places directly from the tube, Vlaminck utilised the Fauvist method of enhancing the hues and their tonal effect by leaving areas of the primed canvas untouched. On one hand this thick, hurried application of paint was a triumphant exclamation of rebellious liberation: 'I wanted to burn down the Ecole des Beaux-Arts with my cobalts and vermillions and I wanted to express my feelings with my brushes... Life and me, me and life' (Vlaminck quoted in J. Freeman, 'Surveying the Terrain: The Fauves and the Landscape,' in exh. cat. The Fauve Landscape, New York, 1990, p. 21). On the other hand, his rhythmic, controlled brushwork marks an incessant questioning of the interpretation of space, a Cézannian examination that Vlaminck relays in the constructed tree trunks and pathway into the background.

The 'Cézannesque' period, as it is known, hailed a more systematic style, with a more considered construction of his compositions and paint application. Vlaminck fondly thought on Cézanne: 'He opens a door to point out a road and invite you to take a walk with him into the world of art' (M. de Vlaminck, Dangerous Corner, New York, 1961, p. 142). Likely considering the tree-lined pathways of Cézanne's beloved Jas du Bouffan works, Vlaminck invites us into this unidentified copse on the banks of the Seine, his dashed brushwork realising the wind rushing through the branches and trunks through their arboreal dance. The rhythmic tempo-like brushwork and orchestral composition of the work reveals Vlaminck's keen awareness of the trans-sensory nature of colour. He was hugely aware of the connection between the two and would often compare colour to music, his sense of colour informed by this synaesthesia.

La forêt is a fine example of the culmination of Vlaminck's fiery Fauve development, with the influences from Van Gogh evident in his sculptural surfaces and experimentation with colour, but also of a newly discovered Cézannian inspiration, which redefined his own personal idiom. He found a new sense of calm to soften his palette and his rebellious, tempestuous temperament. As Maïthé Vallès-Bled notes, the later portion of the Fauve period 'seems to represent nothing but a joy in painting – immediate and palpable – that unites the violence of his emotion with deliberate distortion, the radical nature of a rebel temperament with the flamboyant freedom of the transportation of reality.' (M. Vallès-Bled, op. cit., p. 34)

It is no understatement to say that La forêt marks a momentous placeholder in the canon of twentieth century art. From its creation in 1907-1908, it is a burning example of Fauvist colouring and of early Cézannian appreciation of form and construction, arguably two of the most important developments in modern art that would go on to inform artists to the present day. Further still, it has borne witness to the rise and modernisation of the European art dealer and to the destructive birth of National Socialism that would bring a cruel end to some of its most important protagonists. A cherished family painting which descended through the generations over the course of around 100 years, La forêt is a truly rare work of art, brimming with art historical and personal importance, paralleled by its rich and evocative palette.