Saint-Jeannet 1910

Raoul Dufy painted this landscape, Saint-Jeannet, with oil on canvas, and the energy of the brushstrokes makes me feel like I’m right there, watching him work. Look at those dominant marks of black, grey, and green, punctuated by hints of orange and blue – like the scene is emerging, shifting, solidifying through trial, error, and intuition. I can imagine Dufy standing before this scene, squinting maybe, trying to capture the essence of the mountain village. What was he thinking as he mixed his paints, loaded his brush, and made those first marks on the canvas? The paint is applied with a kind of rough immediacy. I’m especially drawn to the way the strokes build up the form of the mountain, creating this wonderful tension between representation and abstraction. It reminds me a bit of Cézanne’s landscapes, how he used colour and form to construct space and volume. Painting is such a conversation across time, a sharing of ideas between artists, inspiring one another’s creativity. It’s an embodied expression, embracing ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations and meaning.