Raoul Dufy

In ‘Hommage à Claude Lorrain’ Dufy pays ode to the pre-eminent French Baroque painter Claude Lorrain, who over the centuries inspired such artists as J.M.W. Turner, John Constable and Leon Kossoff. Dufy created at least thirteen watercolours in homage to Claude, using his own unique visual language to celebrate the master of landscape painting.

Claude is revered for his often dramatic bucolic landscapes and epic harbour scenes, the latter of which Dufy is clearly inspired by here. In Claude’s paintings ships drift off onto the horizon, against the backdrop of a setting sun, with rolling hills and imposing classical architecture drenched in golden light. In the present gouache Dufy twists this, converging the modern with the classical. Contemporary steam rollers and a Parisian pagoda are placed alongside buildings from antiquity. Exacerbating the dream-like quality of the work, Dufy ignores all rules of perspective as if creating a collision between his world and Claude’s.

While both Claude and Dufy have similar watercolour techniques of applying large washes of colour, Dufy’s use of bright of orange, purple and blue is a fauvist diversion from Claude’s more muted palette. Dufy adorns the ships and buildings in ‘Hommage à Claude Lorrain’ with French flags, perhaps to confirm the artists shared nationality and compare their artistic lineage.