Matisse's Dufy

Matisse's Duty

Three dates, each five years apart, are epochal in the life of Raoul Dufy. In 1895, one of nine children of a bourgeois family in Havre, he first began to paint as relaxation from clerking in an importing firm. In 1900 he went to Paris, studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts under pompous Pere Leon Joseph Bonnat. In 1905, he saw for the first time Henri Matisse's canvas Luxe, calme et volupte. "Confronted by that picture," he said, "I understood all the new reasons for painting." He immediately joined the famed Matisse group (Derain, Braque, Rouault, Vlaminck, Friesz), became one of Matisse's most brilliant disciples. Now he lives in a Montmartre apartment painted the same blue he often uses in his skies. Quiet, looking more like a businessman than a painter, he works strenuously, carries a sketch book everywhere, rarely frequents the cafes or studios of fellow artists. He is 57.

Last week Henri Matisse's smart son, Pierre, opened a Dufy water color show in Manhattan. Most of the pictures were recent, all were typical. Like Matisse, Dufy uses startling paint, but his staccato drawing and deliberately off-register coloring are individual. His favorite scenes are fashionable: the Bois de Boulogne at Paris, the racetracks at Longchamp and Epsom, casinos at Deauville, boats at Cowes. Critics rate his talent witty and observant, have never granted him the accolades bestowed on his master.

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