Beschreibung:

Property of an Important European Collector Jean Dubuffet Follow Le Chien Rôdeur 1955 signed and dated 'J. Dubuffet '55' upper left; further signed and dated 'Vence, août '55' on the reverse oil on canvas 81 x 99.3 cm. (31 7/8 x 39 1/8 in.) Painted in August 1955.
Provenance Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York Mr. and Mrs. Arthur J. Kobacker Steubenville, Ohio Sotheby's Parke-Bernet, New York, 28 October 1970, Lot 64 Dr. Irving Stoner (acquired at the above sale) Robert Elkon Gallery, New York (acquired from the above in 1975) Marisa del Re Gallery, Inc., New York Waddington Galleries, London Mr. and Mrs. George Bloch, Hong Kong Private Collection, Connecticut Sotheby's, New York, 8 November 1994, Lot 42 Collection Stanley J. Seeger (acquired at the above sale) Sotheby's, New York, 8 May 2001, Lot 35 Private Collection (acquired at the above sale) Phillips, London, 14 February 2013, Lot 18 Private Collection, Geneva (acquired at the above sale) Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, Dubuffet Paintings – Assemblages d’Empreintes , 21 February - 17 March 1956, no. 16 Hannover, Kestner Gesellschaft; Zürich Kunsthaus, Jean Dubuffet , 26 October - 4 December 1960, no. 62 New York, The Museum of Modern Art; The Art Institute of Chicago; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Work of Jean Dubuffet , 19 February - 12 August 1962 London, Tate Gallery, Dubuffet Paintings , 23 April - 30 May 1966, no. 72 New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Jean Dubuffet , 26 April - 29 July 1973, then travelled to Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais (no. 76); New York, Robert Elkon Gallery (no. 16), Dubuffet, A Selection , 27 September - 29 October 1975 Literature Peter Selz, The Work of Jean Dubuffet , New York, 1962, p. 114 (illustrated) Max Loreau, Catalogue des Travaux de Jean Dubuffet Fascicule XI: Charettes, Jardins, Personnages Monolithes , Lausanne, 1969, no. 76, p. 64, pl. 76 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay In Jean Dubuffet’s Le Chien Rôdeur , the dog of the title is shown silhouetted against a slender horizontal sliver of sky, making its way cautiously across a flower- and rock-strewn landscape. The dog has been rendered with character and sympathy—it engages the viewer, serving as a bridge to draw our attention into the world of the picture itself. The landscape, depicted vertically as was so often the case in Dubuffet’s works, allowing him to give the sense of incident that is experienced when looking at the world around us, is crammed with detail. The wonder of life, of even the most humble landscape, is here captured through a range of techniques, as Dubuffet revels in the depiction of the wealth of rocks and plants that populate his arid surroundings. Le Chien Rôdeur was painted in Vence in August 1955. The artist had moved there earlier that year, following medical advice aimed at helping his wife Lili recover from a long-standing illness—the air there was meant to be particularly good for the lungs. They managed to rent a home there, but at first were unable to find a suitable studio for the artist to paint—he was limited to a smaller space where he could make works on paper. Later in the year, he managed to buy the lower floor of a house there and returned with gusto to painting. Le Chien Rôdeur dates from this moment, when he was able to plunge himself into the world of colour and impasto, introducing new elements from the world around him in Vence. After all, for this artist who had been so supremely interested in the soil and the earth, the fertile yet rocky landscape that surrounded his home provided an endless source of fascination, and this sings through Le Chien Rôdeur . During the months before he found his larger studio, he had spent time outside, meticulously drawing sections of the roadside in the surrounding area, fascinated by the infinite drama he was able to find within a few square metres of roadside rubble, with its wild flowers, weeds and tufts of greenery poking through the surface. Dubuffet recalled that his Prowling Dogs such as Le Chien Rôdeur were essentially pretexts for paintings using this natural material as its inspiration. The lower half of Le Chien Rôdeur is filled with their legacy, with its catalogue pebbl