Beautiful Marcel Dyf of Gypsy Woman Guitarist from 1960s Excellent Condition

Description: Marcel DyfFrench(1899-1985)“La Gitane” 18” x 22”Oil on Canvasc. 1966(Purchased at Sotheby’s Auction)Unframed, A Frame May be Available Shipping in Continental U.S. is $45 Marcel Dyf(1899-1985)by Jeffrey Morseburg Marcel Dyf was a versatile 20th century French Impressionist whose paintings have remained popular with American, British and Continental collectors for more than fifty years. His floral still lifes, scenes of the French countryside and figurative works have been collected by art aficionados on this side of the Atlantic since they were introduced to American audiences in the 1950s. Dyf’s lush works were all painted with the bright palette and bold brushwork of the French Impressionists who inspired him. The influence of Pierre Auguste Renior on Dyf is especially visible in Dyf’s paintings of the beautiful Claudine, who was first his model, then his muse and finally his wife and the mother of his children. His paintings of Claudine show a tenderness that has always made them popular with collectors. Marcel Dyf was born in Paris on October 7th, 1899, on the cusp of the new century. He was born into a wealthy family and his father was from the picturesque Alsatian city of Colmar, but he moved to the French capital after Alsace was ceded to the Germans after the disastrous Franco-Prussian war. Dyf’s father was in the automobile industry, which was just getting on its feet when young Marcel was growing up in Paris. The family summered in the resort towns of Deauville and Trouville on the Normandy Peninsula. Although Dyf was artistically talented, he possessed a good mind and chose the practical field of engineering for his collegiate studies. Because of his age and studies, he managed to avoid the carnage of World War I, which cost millions of young Frenchmen their lives. As an engineering student he was sent to the French colony of Morocco to aid in the construction of a harbor and it was there that he rediscovered his love of painting under the intense light of the Mediterranean sun. After returning to Paris, he began to study art informally and in 1922, he abandoned the practical career of engineering for art, despite the best efforts of his parents to dissuade him. Although Dyf was born Marcel Dryfus, from the beginning of his artistic career, he shorted his surname to the now familiar “Dyf.” Because Dyf was essentially self-taught, he was free to chart his own course in art and so he chose his favorite masters from the past as his “teachers.” He was always a representational painter who followed in the footsteps of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. Dyf never swayed with the winds of the various modern movements that marched on throughout the 20th century. Instead, he remained true to the subjects and methods that first motivated him and his earliest mature works were country landscape and harbor scenes. In 1922 Dyf settled in the hamlet of Arles, in Provence, where Vincent Van Gogh had created some of his most memorable works. In those days, just decades after the death of Van Gogh, memories of the famous painter who the villagers called le Fou Roux (the crazy redhead) and his subjects were still fresh. Inspired by the Provencal landscape and the famous artists who had painted there, Dyf painted airy, atmospheric works of the countryside, doing smaller works “en plein air” and larger paintings in his studio, which overlooked the Rhone River. By the late 1920s and early 1930s, Dyf began to develop a following and collectors undoubtedly appreciated the freshness of his landscapes and the rustic beauty of the countryside. Despite the ravages of the Depression, he managed to make a living at his art and he received a number of commissions for murals including the Hotel de Ville in Saint Martin de Crau, which sits in the rich farmlands between Arles and Salon-de-Provence. This cycle of murals was dedicated to the four seasons, a subject that the farmers who visited the city hall would have appreciated. Dyf also painted another ambitious mural, a historical cycle, in the Hotel de Ville in Saintes-Maries-de-le- Mer, which sits in the verdant Rhone Delta and serves as the capital of the Camargue, France’s second largest commune. Even though it is a small city in the midst of a farming region, in the 1930s Saintes-Maries-de-le- Mer drew an interesting mix of artists and writers in including Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway, who honeymooned in the region with his second wife Pauline. Dyf also painted murals for the Museon Atlalen, which is dedicated to the history and folklore of the region. The museum was founded in 1899 by the ethnographer Frederic Mistral and is housed in the former Jesuit college in Arles. His other architectural commissions included a mural for the Hotel de Fêtes at College Ampère in Arles and designed stained glass windows for the Église Saint-Louis in Marseille. The stunning Provençal landscape shaped the course of Dyf’s career. The stunning Camargue delta – a land of rough pastures and salty marshes, which is still populated by white horses and the area’s legendary black bulls - sits between the two branches of the Rhone River and swaying grasslands inspired many of Dyf’s early works. It was these paintings that gave him a regional reputation in France and enchanted the occasional foreign visitor to the region. In 1935, Dyf returned to the hurly-burly life of Paris, where he took a studio that was once occupied by the Impressionist Maximillien Luce and began to exhibit his works. However, the interregnum between the two great wars came to a crashing end in the summer of 1940 with the invasion of France by Hitler’s Germany. With the Nazi occupation, Dyf moved back to Arles and began to exhibit his works at Gallerie Jouvene, a historic art gallery on the rue Paradis in Marseilles. Later, while based in Corrèze, he became active with the French resistance, and he was a member of the famous maquis du Limousin. During the first two years of the war, the resistance was largely underground, active in gathering information and minor acts of sabotage against the Vichy government that ruled the south and cooperated with the hated Boche. However, by 1942, thousands of Maquis used weapons smuggled in by the allies to openly battle the Germans who had invaded the region and were forcibly inducting young Frenchmen into labor battalions. During the war Dyf lost many of his friends and comrades, including his brother Rene Dreyfus, who died during deportation. After the allied invasion of Normandy, the maquisards made a valiant attempt to slow the progress of the fanatical 2nd SS Division across the countryside to repel the American, British, and Canadian troops and as a result the Nazis massacred French civilians in a number of savage reprisals. The area the maquis du Limousin operated in was one of the few to be freed from the Nazis by La Résistance and the terrible experiences of the war years undoubtedly effected Dyf for the rest of his days. After liberation, Dyf wanted to return to Arles, but found his old studio had been destroyed, so he settled in Saint-Paul de Vence, which is a picturesque town in the ancient province of the Alpes-Maritimes, which is in the southeast of the country, on the Mediterranean. As the economy began to recover during the years of post-war reconstruction, Dyf exhibited his work in galleries in the resort towns along the Riviera in Cannes and Nice as well as in Marseille and Strasbourg. He spilt his time between the South of France and Paris and exhibited his works in the Salon de Tulleries, the Salon des Artistes Francais and the Salon d’Automne in the French capital. Copyright 2013, 2023, Jeffrey Morseburg, not to be reproduced without express written permission.

Price: 5500 USD

Location: Alhambra, California

End Time: 2024-12-23T04:55:29.000Z

Shipping Cost: 35 USD