Paysage avec personnage

Chaïm Soutine
Paysage avec personnage
1933
huile sur toile
H. 60 ; L. 80 cm avec cadre H. 83 ; L. 104 ; P. 11,5 cm
© RMN-Grand Palais (Musée de l'Orangerie) / Hervé Lewandowski
Chaïm Soutine (1893 - 1943)

In this landscape, the road goes up in a straight line while respecting the vanishing lines. The figure walking in the centre of the road accentuates the effect of perspective. Two other figures can be distinguished on the right-hand path. The colours remain natural: the green of the vegetation, the ochre of the paths and the red of the roofing. Are we meant to see a vegetable garden in the green and red patches in the lower right? Nonetheless, the houses in the mid-ground are sloping toward the left according to the tipping system that became recurrent during the Céret period (1919-1922).
Michèle Bundorf dates it close to White House at the Musée de l'Orangerie and suggests 1933 as a date (1). Colette Giraudon also leans toward a date after the stay in Cagnes (2) .
Nonetheless, the workmanship, especially the treatment of the trees, seems closer to that of paintings done in Paris in the years 1917-1919 than those done in Chartres in the 30s with a thicker impasto and darker tonalities.