Germaine Dufy, Paris (the artist's sister)
Acquired from the above by tꩵhe family of the pre💟sent owner

Hamburg, Kunstverein & Essen, Museum Folkwang, Raoul Dufy, 1967-68, no. 10, illustrated in the catalogue

Maurice Laffaille, Raoul Dufy, Catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre peint, Geneva, 1972, vol. I, no. 105, illustrated p. 99

The canvas is not lined. There are two small patches of canvas glued to the back of the work, no doubt to consolidate the support. There is a small area of stable craquelure to the green jacket of the central figure. Apart from 3 scattered dots of retouching and a 1cm. area of retouching along the upper edge, a few scattered pinhead-sized spots of retouching to the upper right quadrant, a 1cm. sq. area of retouching to the extreme upper right corner, this work is in good condition.
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Executed circa 1905, Le Marché aux poissons is a fine work dating from the early part of the artist's Fauve period. That year proved to be a seminal one for Dufy's career: visiting the Salon des Indépendants, he saw Henri Matisse's masterpiece Luxe, calme et volupté (now in the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris), which changed his art dramatically. This was to be the decisive turning point in his career: 'I understood the new raison d'être of painting and impressionist realism lost its charm for me as I beheld this miracle of the creative imagination at play, in colour and drawing' (quoted in Jacques Lassaigne, Dufy, New York, 1954, p. 22). Matisse's influence was soon apparent, as Dufy began to incorporate the same bright hues in his own work, while at the same time personalising his style by incorporating softer colours such as pale pink, turquoise and yellow.

However, as Alvin Martin and Judi Freeman have written, 'what distinguished the work of the Fauves from Le Havre (Dufy, Friesz and Braque) from that of Matisse and company was the treatment of surface and color. Whereas the Norman artists have been steadfastly loyal to the Impressionist approach to painting, Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck and the others borrowed extensively from the far more audacious generation that succeeded the Impressionists. The Norman Fauves found irresistible the full-blown Fauve manner of painting, characterized by highly saturated color and the laying in of brilliant tones side by side, and they inevitably responded to it in their own work, produced back in their native Normandy. Dufy championed the Fauve cause most assiduously of the three artists (Dufy, Friesz and Braque), while continuing to paint his familiar motifs. His paintings seem to be invigorated with color, no doubt the product of having experienced the sensational Fauve salon' (Alvin Martin & Judi Freeman, "The Distant Cousins in Normandy: Braque, Dufy and Friesz", The Fauve Landscape (exhibition catalogue), New York, 1990, p. 221 & 222).

The setting for this composition is undoubtedly one of the many ports on the Normandy coast, where Dufy was born and spent his formative years, for he seems intimate with the type of daily fish markets that took place on the quay, after the boats had come in. The group of figures, stall holders and customers alike, some standing and talking, some turned away, form a conglomeration of people that gives the composition a sense of movement and energy. Typical of Dufy's Fauve period, the work has a highly-stylised approach to colour and form, with large areas covered with strong, unmodulated pigment. As Dora Perez-Tibi has noted, 'He had become aware of the need to recreate observed reality in terms of his own "reality", and now went on to elaborate his theory of "couleur-lumière", with which he experimented during these years, and which he would apply to his entire œuvre: "I was spontaneously led towards what was to become my real preoccupation. I had discovered a system, whose theory was this: to follow the light of the sun is a waste of time. Light in painting is something completely different: it is a light distributed throughout the composition, a couleur-lumière"' (Dora Perez-Tibi, Dufy, New York, 1989, pp. 23-24).

COMP: 3JLJP_comp.tif
FIG. 1, Raoul Dufy, La foire aux oignons, 1907 (sold: Sotheby's, Londo꧃𓃲n, 5th February 2007)