’19 October 2017 – 21
January 2018
This exhibition, held at
The Courtauld Gallery from 19 October 2017 to 21 January 2018, brings together
an outstanding group of portraits by Chaïm Soutine (1893-1943). Soutine was one
of the leading painters in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s and was seen by many as
the heir to Vincent van Gogh. This major exhibition is the first time he has
been exhibited in the United Kingdom in 35 years.
In the early 1920s, Soutine
became fascinated by the cooks and waiting staff of French hotels and
restaurants, attired in boldly coloured uniforms. Over the next decade, these
humble models sat for him in Paris and the south of France. The resulting
series of portraits offer powerful images of a new social class of service
personnel, who moved from aristocratic households of past centuries to the
luxury hotels and restaurants that arose in the late 19th and early 20th
century. These often-overlooked figures from France’s most fashionable places
of leisure, including the famous Maxim’s restaurant in Paris, appealed to Soutine’s
idea that profound emotion and a deep sense of humanity could be found in such
modest sitters. He strived to achieve the most forceful effects of colour from
the bold whites, reds and blues of their different liveries.
These portraits played a
key role in establishing Soutine’s reputation and turned him from a struggling
painter into a wealthy one. When he started the series, Soutine, an immigrant
from Russia, was living in near-poverty alongside other artists, including his
closest friend, Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920). In 1923 the American collector
Albert C. Barnes saw one of Soutine’s early paintings of a pastry chef and
thought it one of the greatest modern works he had ever seen. He demanded to
see more paintings by Soutine and bought some fifty works on the spot. This
helped lift Soutine out of his desperate circumstances and brought him to
greater prominence. His portraits of hotel and restaurant workers became
especially prized by other collectors and today are considered among his
greatest achievements.
https://courtauld.ac.uk/gallery/what-on/exhibitions-displays/soutine
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