Maurice de Vlaminck (4 April 1876 - 11 October 1958), oil on canvas depicting countryside, signed Vlaminck, recent discovery, not published, executed circa 1925, 17 1/4" x 21", framed 24 3/4" x 29". Provenance: Los Angeles, California estate. Footnote: "After the First World War, Vlaminck found his unmistakable, final style. He focuses on his preferred motif: an almost deserted street, a few houses, heavy clouds driven by the wind. Vlaminck mixes its colors with a high proportion of black and at the same time sets pasty accents in white. His expressive, dark landscapes, far from romanticism, represent the accumulated forces of nature. The rich, earthy colors of the vegetation and the red of the tiled roof on the right edge of the picture shine in the light of the pre-thunderstorm mood. The violence of the thunderstorm is intensified by glistening white color accents, set against a dark coloring that determines the upper sky and the vegetation. The climax of the event is still imminent: the thunderstorm has not yet discharged. The viewer is thus involved in a moment of tense expectation. "When I came to Perche, I had to settle in to its climate and adjust my painting to my feelings. The atmosphere of a landscape where the earth is the sole ruler, which I came from the suburban landscape of Chatou and Bougival, initially shared with me confused by their immense vastness, everything here is big ... one ... simple, rich in essential color and drawing, the horizon is endless, the villages, houses and walls, everything is earth colored, everything is made of earth, earth and sky. .. an immense sky that descends to the horizon like a huge roof (...) low roofs, walls made of clay or quarry stones, green meadows, black poplars, beeches, rachitic walnut trees, rose beeches with reddish leaves depending on the season and hour. Can paint that! And reproduce the cheerful and tragic, fleeting and eternal mood that lives in this reality forever!" (Maurice de Vlaminck, last look back, People and Times, St. Gallen 1965, p. 103; French original edition Paris 1943 )."