Paris, 1925. The Marne sparkles under the summer sun. Dufy sets up his easel facing the open-air cafés where working-class France comes to breathe. Boaters glide on the water, bathers rejoice, life bursts forth in quick, luminous strokes.
A Symphony of Greens
The work overflows with freshness. Dufy applies color in large vibrant flat areas. Houses rise on the left, one brown, the other turquoise with decorative ornaments. Trees soar in supple arabesques. In the foreground, silhouettes sketched in black ink stand out; one rows in a bright yellow canoe. The technique is spontaneous, almost calligraphic. Dufy traces contours with an independent line, then lays down color in flat areas that deliberately overflow. This dissociation between drawing and chromaticism creates a sensation of perpetual movement.
Leisure by the Water, a Modern Motif
The banks of the Marne embody leisure before its time. Already in the 1920s, Parisians fled the capital for these rustic open-air cafés. People danced, went boating, celebrated the modernity of leisure. Dufy captures this effervescence with tenderness. He follows in the lineage of the Impressionists who already celebrated Argenteuil and Bougival, but his pictorial vocabulary is resolutely Fauvist: pure colors, decorative compositions, immediate visual joy.
Raoul Dufy, Painter of Happiness
Born in Le Havre, Raoul Dufy (1877-1953) moved through Fauvism alongside Matisse. He developed a singular style of writing—light and musical—applied to horse races, regattas, and street scenes. His entire oeuvre celebrates French elegance and carefree spirit.
Think about it
💭 Twenty years after the Fauvism of Matisse and Derain, how does Dufy extend their chromatic revolution?
About This Work
- Banks of the Marne, the Boaters
- Raoul Dufy
- 1925
- Oil on canvas
- Musée d’Art moderne de Paris, Paris Musée
- https://www.parismuseescollections.paris.fr/en/node/205908
