Raoul Dufy spent much of his time from childhood in Sainte-Adresse, a small bay along the coast from Dufy’s hometown of Le Havre. With a clear emotional attachment to the seaside resort, Dufy created over fifty depictions of the coastline including the present.

During the 1920s and early 1930s Dufy was at the peak of his powers both in terms of the development of his own visual identity and it’s critical reception. Many of his most celebrated works were produced from this period. Painted in 1924, ‘Sainte-Adresse’ is a glorious example of Dufy’s invigorating colour palette, playful perspective and free brushwork. The deep blue is mirrored across the water and sky, dominating two thirds of the canvas to create harmony. Dufy distorts with scale in the butterflies and fisherman in the foreground against the houses teetering on the hillside behind.

Sainte-Adresse has long been a destination that attracted artists. In the 1867, Monet and his family spent their summer in the town creating such paintings as ‘Garden at Sainte-Adresse’ and ‘Regatta at Saint-Adresse’ now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Amongst some of his most prized paintings, Dufy’s depictions of Sainte-Adresse are now in the collections of Centre Pompidou, Paris (‘La plage de Sainte-Adresse’, 1904), National Gallery of Art, Edinburgh (‘The Beach at Sainte-Adresse’, 1906) and Museum Barberini, Potsdam (‘The Beach of Sainte-Adresse’, 1906) to name but a few.