Feb 19, 2008 - Sale 2136

Sale 2136 - Lot 13

Price Realized: $ 9,600
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
HALE WOODRUFF (1900 - 1980)
Untitled (Provence Landscape).

Oil on canvas, circa 1930. 190x240 mm; 7 1/2x9 1/2 inches. Inscribed "Canan" and "2F" in pencil in another hand on the stretcher bars.

Provenance: private collection.

Woodruff left Paris for Cagnes-sur-Mer on the coast of Provence in the summer of 1930, following in the footsteps of his countrymen Palmer Hayden and William H. Johnson, and such notables as Modigliani, Renoir and Soutine. Attracted to its artistic history, sunlight and cheap accomodations, Woodruff soon rented a studio at 34, rue Carnot which he later learned was once the atelier of Chaim Soutine. Though Woodruff denied Soutine's influence, one could argue that this small experimental and Expressionist landscape with its flattened, twisted forms and just a hint of sky reflects an interest in both Cézanne and Soutine. Painted on a standard French stretcher bar size, Woodruff has used this 2F or "deux figure" on its side as a "paysage." The French Academy standardized the sizes for "paysage," "figure" and "marine" (landscape, figure and seascape) in the 19th century. Leininger-Miller pp. 130-31.