Artist | Chaïm Soutine (1893 - 1943)

Year | c.1923

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

73,5 x 92 cm

Location 📍

Orangerie Museum → Level -2, Room 15

The Village

Le Village is considered the most radical and unusual of Chaim Soutine's landscapes. While the subject—comprising houses, trees, and the sky—appears classical, the treatment reveals a tormented character and an affirmation of great modernity. Soutine dramatically distorted and intertwined every element, effectively eliminating any traditional sense of perspective or balance. This "mental landscape" eclipses the strict observation of nature to make way for a profound expression of feeling.

Despite its distorted appearance, the painting is modeled after a real location: La Basse Gaude, a village near Cagnes. This work belongs to a series of nine paintings produced in 1923-1924, featuring houses and a mill clinging to a rocky hillside at varying heights. Soutine created this piece during a period of emotional contradiction; in late 1923, he wrote to the Parisian gallery owner Zborowski, "I would like to leave Cagnes. This landscape that I can no longer stand..." This anguished and subjective reinterpretation of his environment firmly places Soutine within the Expressionist tradition that was particularly marked before and after the First World War.