JEAN DUFY (1888–1964)

Private collection, France

“‘The importance of light,’ said Jean Dufy. To this we must add ‘colour as a language’.
A language of purity, nobility and strength for the colour white, often reserved for clowns, horses and athletes. Against a powerful chromatic background – red, blue and black – in keeping with the tension and apprehension that generally accompany acrobatic acts, a few light, serpentine brushstrokes highlight the trapeze artists’ outstretched bodies in white (cat. B.532).
This taste for colour and the homage to the colour white find their culmination in a large painting from 1927 entitled The Circus (cat. B.464), a work celebrating the horse, expressed magnificently. The circus is stripped of its circular ring in favour of a wide open space where the horses perform, whether mounted or not, each according to their act. In the centre, a red-clad ringmaster makes a pair of white horses rear up, behind which stand three other horses in blood-red and anthracite. All around, other haute école horses encircle the magnificent pair. The audience, seated in the stands in the shadows, remains modest whilst the stage is bathed in the full glare of the spotlights, rendered in a multitude of off-whites, yellows, bright reds, oranges and turquoise blues.
The strong complementary tones clash with the light hues in an uneven texture, at times transparent, at times heavy, thus releasing the desired intensity and rhythm across the entire canvas.
In this work, Jean Dufy suspends time and invites the viewer to contemplate.
In the bottom left-hand corner, the signature-inscription.
In the bottom right-hand corner, the white clown with a guitar. Another signature.”

Jacques Bailly and Marie-Caroline Sainsaulieu [preface by], Jean Dufy (1888–1964), Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre, Volume I, Paris: Éditions Jacques Bailly, pp. 36 and 38