AUGUSTE HERBIN (1882-1960)
Vue d'un port Corse I
signed 'Herbin' (lower center)
oil on canvas
21 1/16 x 25 3/16 in (53.5 x 64 cm)
Painted in 1907
Footnotes:
Provenance
Galerie Agora (Daniel Malingue), Paris.
M. Knoedler & Co., New York.
Private collection, New York.
Michelle Rosenfeld Fine Arts Inc., New York.
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1992.

Exhibited
New York, M. Knoedler & Co., Auguste Herbin, Paintings from 1907 to 1958, January 28 – February 16, 1978, no. 1.

Literature
G. Claisse, Herbin, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, Lausanne, 1993, no. 112 (illustrated p. 298).


Like many painters central to the vanguard of the modernist era, Auguste Herbin continually developed his artistic practice not only by experimenting with select avant-garde movements, but by fully delving into each stylistic and theoretical sphere. Having first focused on an Impressionist and then Divisionist style, Herbin embraced Fauvism by 1906 and subsequently Cubism. In 1907, he exhibited his work alongside Georges Braque, André Derain, and Maurice de Vlaminck at the 1907 Salon des Indépendants, a crystallizing moment for the young and audacious Fauves.

Vue d'un port Corse I, which Herbin painted in 1907, epitomizes his ebullient Fauvist period. The present work is one of only fifteen sun-drenched Fauve images that the artist painted during a trip to Corsica in 1907 as the guest of Wilhelm Uhde, a German art collector, dealer, and critic. The juxtaposition of bright colors applied with confident, loose brushstrokes makes Vue d'un port Corse I vibrate with energy. Herbin's staccato impasto lines succinctly depict the movement of the water, but even the inert building facades appear to almost jostle against each other – a riot of lemon, crimson, aqua, and lavender.

Herbin deftly draws in the viewer with specific compositional elements. Orthogonal lines of the quay create a dramatic sense of receding space, and the aerial perspective utilized to delineate the mountains and sky also serves to create greater depth and sweeping majesty for a scene that could easily feel hemmed in by the wall of contiguous edifices. Vue d'un port Corse I is a masterwork encompassing Herbin's strong sense of line and draftsmanship cultivated during his studies at the turn of the century at the École des Beaux-Arts de Lille as well as the newfound Fauvist emphasis on dramatic, unnatural colors and lively brushwork.

The present work carries a distinguished provenance; it has remained an important cornerstone of the same private collection for over three decades.
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