Marcel Dyf - "Summer Harvest"

Stock Code: 2131 - SOLD

Description: A wonderful summer harvesting scene, most likely set in the fields of Brittany, observed in the modern impressionist style of one of France's best 20th century landscape painters - Marcel Dyf.

Further Information: Born in Paris in 1899 Dyf spent his childhood holidays in Normandy. The artistic climate to which he was exposed in Paris and in Normandy was crucial during his youth, as innovative ideas and new thinking, born of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist movements, formed ever widening circles of influence in Europe. Swept up in the atmosphere, Dyf decided in his early twenties to give up his career in engineering and become an artist.

He had little formal artistic training but owed much of his inspiration to the great masters of the past such as Rembrandt, whom he particularly admired, Vermeer and Tiepolo. In Provence, challenged by a new range of colours and light, by new landscapes and images and under the same intense sky that lent its brilliance to Van Gogh's art, Dyf graduated from painter to artist.

Throughout these years Dyf principally painted in three areas: Brittany, Provence, and the Ile de France, although he also travelled in Morocco, Venice, the United States, Holland and England. His artistic legacy will be a lasting one; he painted the landscape of France with an intensity of feeling that entirely matched his personality and with a vigour that never tired. His life yielded a rich harvest of work whose quality, once established, did not dwindle in his later years. His art is youthful, yet traditional, with a sensational use of colour. His paintings give an outward appearance of being simple, undemanding compositions, but the process of creating them was exactly the opposite - it was complex, rigorous, disciplined and considered.

Condition: Excellent. The painting has been lightly cleaned and re-framed in a mid 20th century style frame.

Country of Origin: France

Artist & Painting: Marcel Dyf; French (1899-1985) "Summer Harvest". oil on canvas, circa 1960. Signed lower left.

Provenance: Private collection London

Signed: "Dyf" - lower left

Dimensions of Canvas: Height 24.00 inches (60.96cm) Width 29.00 inches (73.66cm)

Price: £19,900