Lot 320 D

Oil on canvas 60.5 x 73 cm, framed. Signed 'Vlaminck' lower right. - Minor circular craqueleur in the lower left part of the painting with tiny retouches.

With a photo-certificate from Gilbert Pétrides, Paris, dated 29 June 1984 (no. 17.660).

The painting is offered with a certificate by the Wildenstein Institute, Paris, dated 23 October 2013. The work is registered there under the reference number 2161-13.10.23/11915 and will be included in the catalogue raisonné of the works by Maurice de Vlaminck.

Provenance
Galerie Thannhauser München, Luzern, Berlin (label on the stretcher); Hauswedell & Nolte, Hamburg, Auction 8 July 1984, acquired there by the previous ownwer; private collection, South Germany

“I love the countryside, not occasionally, but always, because I live here. ... I paint where I live and that is enough for me. I chose the place where I built my house for deep and human reasons and not for 'artistic' ones. I do not need any new impressions to stimulate me to work”, writes the passionate landscape painter Vlaminck of the motif dearest to him. And he goes on: “Coming from the suburban landscape of Chatou and Bougival the atmosphere of the landscape, where the earth is absolute ruler, initially disoriented me with its monstrous vastness. Here everything is big ... one ... simple, rich in essential colour and drawing. The horizon is endless; the villages, houses, walls, everything is of an earthy colour, everything built of earth. Earth and sky ... an immeasurable sky that sinks down to the horizon like a gigantic roof. Vastness upon vastness. Clouds speed across the low sky in which swarms of crows and starlings fly. Straw ricks in the fields, straw on the farmyard floor, rotting straw of a muted colour. Low roofs, walls made of clay or fieldstone. Green meadows, black poplars, beech trees, rickety nut trees, hornbeams with reddish leaves that change colours according to the season and time of day. To be able to paint that! And to convey the simultaneously cheerful and tragic, fleeting and eternal atmosphere that vibrates forever in this reality!” (Maurice de Vlaminck, Rückblick in letzter Stunde: Menschen und Zeiten, St Gallen/Switzerland 1965, pp. 102f., after the original French edition “Portraits avant décès”, Paris 1943).
The “Allée” clearly reveals the artist's fascination with this austere landscape. The street stretching out beneath a vast sky, lined with the slender silhouettes of the poplars, positively pulls the viewer into the space of the picture and towards the low-set horizon.