PROVENANCE
Collection of Ali Khan
Galerie Charpentier, Paris, May 23, 1957, lot 41
Impressionist & Modern Art Day Sale, Sotheby's New York, November 8, 2006, lot 535
Private Collection, Nova Scotia

LITERATURE
Raymond Cogniat, Raoul Dufy, 1962, reproduced plate 9
Maurice Laffaille, Raoul Dufy: Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint, Volume 2, 1973, reproduced page 380, catalogue #910

EXHIBITED
Château de la Vigne, Bondue, Brittany, École de Paris, Collections privées du Nord, 1967, catalogue #78

Raoul Dufy was born in Le Havre in 1877. He comes from a modest background. Very early on, he considered a career as an artist, but this choice did not reassure his parents, who envisioned a more orderly career in administration for their son. However, Dufy’s determination eventually convinced them. In 1895, the young Raoul got his father to enrol him at the École municipale des beaux-arts in Le Havre, where he met fellow student Othon Friesz, also a native of the port city. For three years, he learned the profession of painter and refined his technique. He executed landscapes, market scenes, the beaches of Le Havre and portraits in the manner of his celebrated elders, Eugène Boudin, Camille Corot and Alfred Sisley.

Dufy was born by the sea, let us not forget. The sea, whether it was the English Channel or the Mediterranean, was his favourite subject and the subject of all his research. “Did you know that painters are born only in maritime climates? ... The painter needs to constantly have before his eyes a certain quality of light, a sparkle, an airy palpitation that bathes what he sees.” Raoul Dufy made this confidence, in the evening of his life, in interviews he had with his biographer and friend Pierre Courthion.

In 1899, he left Le Havre to continue his studies in Paris and participate in his first exhibitions. During his life, Dufy traveled a great deal in search of the sea and the light: that of the Mediterranean countries—Italy, Morocco, Spain and the South of France—but also other places, such as Great Britain, to which he returned constantly between 1925 and 1935. In England he frequented the Ascot, Epsom and Goodwood racetracks. In London he observed the boats on the Thames and the regattas at Henley. He went to Cowes to find the Normandy sea. During his stay he painted several regatta scenes on the rough seas, the port of Cowes with its sailing ships draped with English flags and le forban.

In the painting Départ des Régates à Cowe, we find everything that makes us love Dufy: the movement, the gleaming colour, the light, the pleasure of living. It is windy, the sailboats are sailing and threatening to collide, the sea is rough. Towards the end of his life, in 1952, he made a replica of a painting painted in 1935 that can be found reproduced in the catalogue raisonné of his paintings by Maurice Laffaille (see # 906 and #907). He remembered Cowes…

The painting presented in this sale comes from a prestigious collection, that of Ali Khan, a great art lover.

We would like to thank Fanny Guillon-Laffaille, art historian and author of Raoul Dufy’s catalogue raisonné, for contributing the above essay, translated from the French.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars