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7 L'estacade au Havre, c.1924-25 Signed lower left 'Raoul Dufy' Oil on canvas 25 5/8 x 31 7/8 in, 65.1 x 81 cm Provenance Galerie Druet, Paris Private collection, London Private collection Literature This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by Fanny Guillon-Laffaille, dated Paris, 20 November 2003 (no. P03-424) and stating that the work will be reproduced in the second supplement of the Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint de Raoul Dufy currently in preparation Dufy often returned to paint the landscape of his youth along the shores of Trouville, Honfleur, Sainte-Adresse and Le Havre. Enamoured by the sails and masts that scattered the harbours of these towns, Dufy proclaimed 'malheur à l'homme qui vit dans un climate eloigne de la mer' (woe to the man who lives far from the sea). During this definitive period in the 1920s Dufy created a series of works from the pier in Le Havre, where he had spent his formative years working for a coffee- importing company. In 1926 Dufy created three versions of this scene in which the narrow strip of the pier is filled with promeneurs and bathers: one of these three works can now be found at the Musée André Malraux in Le Havre. Using different colours across the three examples of this important group of paintings, Dufy employs astonishing shades of deep midnight blue and crimson in L'estacade au Havre that are greatly influenced by the unruly palette of the Fauves. This arrangement of bold tones epitomizes Dufy's theories of ambient couleur-lumière, where pure colour is used to describe light and strokes of white to delineate shadow. The strength and energy of Dufy's line, used to define the structure of the pier and figures scattered across the jetty and shore, is also reminiscent of the artist's remarkable early wood-engravings including the famous illustrations for Apollinaire's Le Bestiaire ou Cortège d'Orphée published in 1911.