Rupert Toovey
Rupert Toovey
4 days ago
Opinion

Sussex Heritage: The enduring appeal of artist Marcel Dyf

Marcel Dyf (1899-1985) was an artist inspired by the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. Born in Paris he initially trained as an engineer before deciding to become an artist in his early twenties. He moved to Arles in Provence. Provence, as much an idea as a place, has gathered diverse peoples to her over millennia. Each have added to her richness and, in their turn, have been shaped by this remarkable land and her people. Here Marcel Dyf bought a studio and began to paint captured by the Provencal landscape.

Marcel Dyf - 'Voile rouge au Logeo', oil on canvas.

Dyf was self-taught. His paintings have a freedom and vigour expressed with an extraordinary use of brilliant colour which appears to dance like light across the canvas. The compositions and painting,

In 1935 he returned to Paris. The German invasion and occupation in 1940 saw Dyf return to Arles and then join the French Resistance in the Dordogne. After the war he once again returned to Arles to find his studio destroyed by the fighting. During the years that followed he divided his time between Paris and Saint Paul-de-Vence in Provence.

In the summer of 1954 Marcel Dyf fell in love with his muse Claudine Godat. She was beautiful, patient and just nineteen, thirty-six years younger than Dyf. They were married in 1956 and bought a 16th century hunting lodge at Bois d’Arcy near Versailles. The call of Provence would remain to the end of his days and each winter he returned there to paint. In the 1960s Claudine took them to Brittany where Dyf found new inspiration and they bought a summer house in the village of Arzon. It was during this period that Frost & Reed began to buy his work for sale in London.

Marcel Dyf - 'Peupliers a Maussane', oil on canvas (detail).
Marcel Dyf - 'Peupliers a Maussane', oil on canvas (detail). Credit: Toovey's

The beautiful oil Voile rouge au Logeo is fine example of the effect that the Brittany landscape had on Dyf. Our eye is drawn across the still waters with the use of composition and colour. You sense the on shore breeze apparent in the trees. The artist’s love of Provence is apparent in the landscape Peupliers a Maussane the palette bleached by the sun. Both these paintings had Frost & Reed labels and realised £7,500 and £6,500 at Toovey’s. Testament to the enduring appeal of this 20th century French artist.

Rupert Toovey is a senior director of Toovey’s, the leading fine art auction house in West Sussex, based on the A24 at Washington -  www.tooveys.com- and a priest in the Church of England Diocese of Chichester.