Raoul Dufy (1877-1953)

In July and August 1906, Dufy traveled along the Normandy coast in the company of Albert Marquet. The two painted side by side in the popular resort towns of Trouville, Honfleur, Le Havre, and its smaller neighbor, Sainte-Adresse, the location of the present work. Dufy had grown up in Le Havre, spending much of his childhood and adolescence there, and both the port of Le Havre and the bay of Sainte-Adresse were to provide him with fixed pictorial reference points during his career. It was a year later, in 1907, that Dufy first introduced the motif of the fisherman on the jetty, employing the angles and curves of the rods to great effect in breaking up his composition and introducing into his horizontal landscapes a subtle note of dynamism. Dufy returned to the Normandy coast frequently throughout his life, as his childhood on the coast had instilled in him a great love of the sea.