Les Glaïeuls

In 1919, shortly before Soutine left Montparnasse for Céret, he painted at least ten still-lifes that depict bouquets of gladioli bursting forth from a small pitcher, the blossoms surging across the surface of the canvas in skeins of crimson paint (Tuchman, Dunow, and Perls, nos. 33-42). In contrast to the meager mealtime arrangements and restrained floral bouquets that Soutine had been painting since 1916, these gladioli still-lifes are characterized by a powerfully expressive handling that recalls Van Gogh's sunflowers (although Soutine went to great lengths to deny Van Gogh's influence). Monroe Wheeler has written, "The point of his fascination and research in them all seems to have been the play of thick but sinuous stems and flaring red blossoms. It may not have been so much the true forms of the leaves and petals which appealed to him as the blood-redness, fire-redness, which he rendered like little licking flames" (Soutine, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1950, p. 46). The present Glaïeuls is the largest and most elaborately worked of the sequence, the pitcher resting atop a crumpled, vermilion-colored cloth whose angular peaks and valleys echo the twisting forms of the flowers. Maurice Tuchman has written about this painting:

"With its forms thrusting and straining over the surface, this painting reinforces so many of the tendencies of the earlier works while establishing a clear transition to the all-over convulsion and entanglement of the Céret landscapes of 1919 to 1922. The space is increasingly compressed and pressurized; the forms flatten out and the liquid pigment surface asserts itself as a tangible entity. The chaotic swirl of brush and actual paint, together with the packed tangle of forms, tilted and toppling, create an image of raw energy. Indeed, the emotional intensity is now conveyed more through paint, form, and rhythm than by subject matter" (exh. cat., op. cit., 2009, p. 89).

Les Glaïeuls also has an exceptionally important provenance. Its first owner was none other than Dr. Albert Barnes, the wealthy American industrialist whose now-legendary discovery of Soutine transformed the artist's fortunes almost overnight, bringing him both financial security and international recognition. In December 1922, Barnes, who had already amassed a world-class collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, was struck by a portrait by Soutine that he saw in the Paris gallery of Paul Guillaume. Guillaume took Barnes to visit Soutine's dealer Leopold Zborowski, who sold him all the paintings by the artist that he had on hand--a total of fifty-two canvases. The present painting may have been featured in both an exhibition of Barnes's recent purchases at Guillaume's gallery in January 1923 and a group show that Barnes mounted later in the year at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, which introduced Soutine's work to an American audience.

In 1945, Les Glaïeuls entered another celebrated collection, that of Ralph and Georgia Colin, whose guest book was a veritable who's-who of the New York cultural scene at mid-century. The first painting that the Colins ever purchased, in the early 1930s, was a Soutine that is said to have shocked their friends; undeterred, they hung it over their mantelpiece and went on to acquire fifteen more canvases by the artist, which took their place alongside vanguard works by Picasso, Matisse, Miró, Modigliani, and Dubuffet. When the Colin collection, including the present painting, was first exhibited publicly at Knoedler in 1960, James Thrall Soby (of The Museum of Modern Art) wrote, "The Colins...bring to their purchases not only instinctive flair, but comparative standards which allow them to recognize quality within quality, that is to pick out outstanding works by outstanding artists. As a result, their collection abounds with absolute jewels" (exh. cat., op. cit., 1960, n.p.).