Lot 204 D

Over the course of the period she spent working in France, Mela Muter painted numerous images of landscapes and views of towns in Provence, mostly from the area around Avignon. The fascination that this region's diversity of colours and forms exercised over the artist is particularly palpable in the large-format panorama of a little Provençal town offered here.
From an elevated vantage point, an extensive view opens up above the mountainous landscape; lanes with cubic, interlocking formations of houses drop steeply down and away towards a river, perhaps the Rhône. A church tower and the towers of a fortress are also visible, although the precise extent of the townscape remains uncertain. Beyond the river, additional buildings are nestled within a low-lying area, behind which a mountain ridge crowned by a fortress rises up along the numerous thrusting rock formations.
The intense light of the south permeates everything depicted here: it is reflected by the white walls of the houses, provides the surface of the river with its radiant cobalt blue and even invests the reddish-brown tones of the rooftops and the earth that define the tonality of the picture with radiant nuances in pink and orange.