O riginally from Le Havre, Dufy depicted the fields and shores of Normandy in some of his earliest works, which showcased the artist’s early Fauve style developed after encountering Henri Matisse’s Luxe, calme et volupté at the Salon des Indépendants in 1905. Dufy would join the ranks of the Fauves along with Émile Othon Friesz and Albert Marquet, eventually synthesizing their bright, unadulterated colors with the structured compositions of Paul Cézanne and the Cubists.

Painted in 1935, the present work finds Dufy revisiting the scenery of his earliest paintings and rendering them in his fully mature aesthetic. While the bright, sparse use of pigment and sketch-like delineations are characteristic of his work, the subject matter is atypical. Dufy was better known for illustrating contemporary social scenes, such as parades, horse races or regattas in the French Riviera, but he likely found new inspiration when visiting his friend and dealer Étienne Bignou, who lived in Vallon, Normandy and whose house he occasionally painted between 1934-37. In the present work, Dufy taps into the long-established tradition of depicting wheat fields in the French countryside, a theme often represented by both Impressionists such as Pissarro and Monet, as well as Post-Impressionists such as Vincent van Gogh.