Chaïm Soutine, Russia / Belarus / France (1893-1943)
Master of colour, observer of nature
“There was a quality to his painting that one has not seen for generations – this power to translate life into paint – paint into life” ~ Jacques Lipchitz on Soutine
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Born in the shtetl of Smilavičy – then part of the Russian Empire, now in Belarus – Jewish painter, Chaïm Soutine emigrated to France in 1913 where he was to become one of the most celebrated artists of the École de Paris. He lived and worked at the Cité Falguière between c. 1915/16-1919 (Franklin 2026, 38), during which period he produced some of his best-known still life scenes, as well as two celebrated paintings of the studio complex itself. Typical of Soutine’s accuracy in capturing his subjects, the distinctive red timberwork, double wooden door and large windows in the frontage of Atelier 11 are instantly recognisable in L’Atelier de l’artiste à la Cité Falguière (c. 1915-1916).
One of the youngest of eleven children and raised in a context of strict Talmudism in the shtetl, Soutine’s childhood was organised around Jewish ritual life. Likely attending kheyder (elementary school) between the ages of three and five (Zborowski and Herzog 1962, 88), he would have learned to read and write Hebrew while speaking Yiddish (and a little Russian) within his community. Around the age of thirteen, he was sent to Minsk by his father to apprentice in a trade (Kikoïne quoted in Vallès-Bled 1989, 34) but instead undertook his first formal artistic instruction at an art school led by Belarusian painter, Yakov (Yankel) Krieger (1869–1940). |
Chaïm Soutine, L’Atelier de l’artiste à la Cité Falguière
(c. 1915-1916) Private Collection |
In pursuit of further study, Soutine relocated to Vilnius, Lithuania when he was around the age of seventeen in 1910. There, he successfully applied to the Vilnius Drawing School (VDS), which operated between 1866 and 1915 (Širkaité 2018, 92–6; 2020) and which instructed its students in a traditional curriculum of life drawing, still-life painting (in oils), drawing from memory and copying from illustrations (Širkaité 2018, 316). Combined with his studies in Minsk, Soutine’s early formal education in Vilnius went on to influence his professional practice in Paris, in which he consistently worked in the traditional western genres of still life, landscape and portraiture and which knowingly explored the French artistic tradition (e.g. Jean Fouquet, Chardin, Courbet, Corot) and the Old Masters (most notably Rembrandt).
In search of further training and professional opportunities, in 1913 Soutine undertook the arduous journey (Franklin 2026, 30-31) from Vilnius to Paris when he emigrated permanently to France. As Abstract Expressionist artist, Jack Tworkov (1900–82) (1950) observed, travelling from Vilnius to Paris at that time was ‘not the same as going from Amsterdam, London or New York to Paris’. Rather, it demonstrated ‘an extraordinary character – restless, audacious and imaginative’. Courageous, too, for both the geographical distance – a journey of approximately 1,200 miles – and the cultural shift involved were substantial.
Soutine’s first residence in Paris still exists at 2 Passage de Dantzig. La Ruche – or ‘the Beehive’ – remains a large artists’ studio complex and exhibition space, established in 1902 by renowned French sculptor, Alfred Boucher (1850-1934). Currently providing space for around fifty artists – and up to 150 when Boucher first opened the complex – the building lives up to its name. Around 1915/16, however, Soutine relocated to the Cité Falguière (see above), where he met and socialised with fellow École de Paris artists, Tsuguharu Foujita (1886-1968), Oscar Miestchaninoff (1884-1956) and Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) amongst others. At this time, Soutine produced some of his best-known still lifes, including a particularly arresting series of floral still lifes dedicated entirely to gladioli (Musée de l'Orangerie) and others that testify to his then impoverished circumstances -- such as Still Life with Herrings (c. 1916, Galerie Larock-Granoff, Paris), which features only three small fish on an otherwise empty plate.
At the prompting of his then dealer, Léopold Zborowski (1889-1932) in 1919 Soutine relocated to the small Catalan town of Céret in the French Pyrenees in search of fresh subject-matter. He lived and worked there for three years, regularly painting the local residents, with whom he got on well, and, most famously, the surrounding landscape. Indeed, his landscapes from this period have become some of Soutine’s most celebrated works in any genre, capturing as they do the area’s numerous Plane trees, towering hills and lush, dark, dense foliage. So accurate an observer of nature was Soutine that many of the individual trees he painted at this time were still identifiable over one hundred years later (Matamoros 2000; Franklin and Franklin 2027).
Towards the end of his residence in Céret, Soutine got his big break. The American chemist turned art collector Dr Albert Barnes (1872-1951) encountered the artist’s work during a buying trip to Paris and made a bulk purchase of his paintings – the exact number given varies but is likely around 52 (BFA, AR-ABC-1950-272) – to add to his collection, now housed in the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Assisted additionally by the efforts of his two dealers, Zborowski and Paul Guillaume (1891-1934), Soutine’s career took off and from the mid-1920s onwards his paintings began to sell for significant sums both at home in Franc and internationally.
A second excursion from Paris in 1923 took Soutine once again to the south of France, this time to the small town of Cagnes-sur-Mer on the fashionable Riviera. Already the residence of Renoir and Soutine’s friend, the Swiss painter, Émile Lejeune (1885–1964), like Céret, Cagnes had a reputation for being an artists’ haunt, with its enticing warm, sunny climate and distinctive Mediterranean light. Its picturesque, cobbled streets, tiled roofs and medieval architecture appealed to Soutine; his paintings from this period depict views of the old town’s residential buildings and churches (with the castle, cafés, restaurants and shops notably absent) and views of narrow lanes and winding streets. In a continued theme from his Céret period, many of these landscapes also feature characterful trees, which are still identifiable today.
Returning to Paris in 1925, and up until the outbreak of the Second World War, Soutine chose to live in a series of increasingly expensive studio-apartments in the Montparnasse, Parc-de-Montsouris and Petit-Montrouge quarters of the city’s 14th arrondissement (see Franklin 2026, 71-86). Ranging from a purpose-built artist’s apartment with heating and hot water on the colourfully-named Passage d’Enfer (‘Passage of Hell’) opposite the southern border of Montparnasse Cemetery, to the Vila Seurat apartment building he shared with American novelist, Henry Miller (1891-1980), these locations attest to the affluence attendant to his increasing commercial success on the Paris and international art scenes. Indeed, his work became a desirable investment for an increasing number of dealers and collectors, all of whom admired his skill both as a draughtsman and colourist along with the vitality of his subject-matter, which focussed on the people, places and objects present in his everyday life.
Some of Soutine’s best-known works in any genre were painted during his last decade and a half in Paris. His (in)famous carcass of beef series of the mid-1920s, for example, was produced when he was renting a studio on the rue du Saint-Gothard in Parc-de-Montsouris. In another example, while living on the Boulevard Edgar-Quinet, Soutine embarked on a series of portraits of sitters in uniform – chefs, waiters, bellboys and valets, etc. – which responded to Paris’s lively café and hotel culture of the 1920s and 30s. Indeed, Soutine was fundamentally interested in ordinary people: his sitters are not models dressed up to look like someone or something else – hence their unstudied poses and often worried or bored expressions; they were ordinary people who temporarily became Soutine’s models.
In the two years preceding the outbreak of the Second World War, Soutine was living with his partner, Gerda Groth (1910-1983) – a German, Jewish refugee from Magdeburg (Garde [1973] 2022, 7–8) – at the Villa Seurat. He had suffered all his life from a chronic illness: a stomach ulcer that became increasingly symptomatic as the years progressed, and which often prevented him from painting for long periods owing to ongoing (sometimes very severe) pain and a heavily restricted diet, which in turn resulted in chronic fatigue. Concerned, Groth sought a formal diagnosis on his behalf and was alarmed to discover that the ulcer had turned cancerous; Soutine was given five to six years to live (Groth quoted in Courthion 1972, 164).
Seeking respite from the stresses of city life, the couple holidayed during the summer of 1939 in the village of Civry-sur-Serein in Yonne Department. When war was declared, however, the couple were placed under house arrest and forbidden from leaving the town. This was to be the beginning of a four-year period of protracted upheaval and trauma in Soutine’s life – including Groth’s internment in Gurs (being German she was an enemy alien) in May 1940 (Garde [1973] 2022, 83) – that ultimately led to his death.
Astoundingly, however, while moving between Civry, Paris and the town of Champigny-sur-Veude (near Tours) in a desperate attempt to evade the Vichy and Nazi authorities and seek treatment from his doctors in Paris, Soutine continued to paint. As his final partner, the artist, Marie-Berthe Aurenche (1906-1960) noted, ‘[h]e would sometimes paint for ten or twelve hours in a single day. Neither the cold nor the storm could stop him’ (Aurenche 1952). Some of his best-known landscapes were made during his time in Civry and Champigny and they evidence his recurrent study of the local arboreal life and the large skies of the flat land surrounding him.
By the end of July 1943, when he was in Champigny, his health was deteriorating at an alarming rate and one day he passed out (Orloff 1951, 20). An ambulance was called and he was first taken to the local hospital in Chinon before being moved to a clinic in Paris in the 16th (APP). Upon arrival, his condition was recognized as life-threatening, a perforated stomach ulcer diagnosed and an operation performed (Garde [1973] 2022, 106). Despite the best efforts of the surgeon, however, Soutine died shortly afterwards. He died at six o’clock in the morning on 9 August.
In search of further training and professional opportunities, in 1913 Soutine undertook the arduous journey (Franklin 2026, 30-31) from Vilnius to Paris when he emigrated permanently to France. As Abstract Expressionist artist, Jack Tworkov (1900–82) (1950) observed, travelling from Vilnius to Paris at that time was ‘not the same as going from Amsterdam, London or New York to Paris’. Rather, it demonstrated ‘an extraordinary character – restless, audacious and imaginative’. Courageous, too, for both the geographical distance – a journey of approximately 1,200 miles – and the cultural shift involved were substantial.
Soutine’s first residence in Paris still exists at 2 Passage de Dantzig. La Ruche – or ‘the Beehive’ – remains a large artists’ studio complex and exhibition space, established in 1902 by renowned French sculptor, Alfred Boucher (1850-1934). Currently providing space for around fifty artists – and up to 150 when Boucher first opened the complex – the building lives up to its name. Around 1915/16, however, Soutine relocated to the Cité Falguière (see above), where he met and socialised with fellow École de Paris artists, Tsuguharu Foujita (1886-1968), Oscar Miestchaninoff (1884-1956) and Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) amongst others. At this time, Soutine produced some of his best-known still lifes, including a particularly arresting series of floral still lifes dedicated entirely to gladioli (Musée de l'Orangerie) and others that testify to his then impoverished circumstances -- such as Still Life with Herrings (c. 1916, Galerie Larock-Granoff, Paris), which features only three small fish on an otherwise empty plate.
At the prompting of his then dealer, Léopold Zborowski (1889-1932) in 1919 Soutine relocated to the small Catalan town of Céret in the French Pyrenees in search of fresh subject-matter. He lived and worked there for three years, regularly painting the local residents, with whom he got on well, and, most famously, the surrounding landscape. Indeed, his landscapes from this period have become some of Soutine’s most celebrated works in any genre, capturing as they do the area’s numerous Plane trees, towering hills and lush, dark, dense foliage. So accurate an observer of nature was Soutine that many of the individual trees he painted at this time were still identifiable over one hundred years later (Matamoros 2000; Franklin and Franklin 2027).
Towards the end of his residence in Céret, Soutine got his big break. The American chemist turned art collector Dr Albert Barnes (1872-1951) encountered the artist’s work during a buying trip to Paris and made a bulk purchase of his paintings – the exact number given varies but is likely around 52 (BFA, AR-ABC-1950-272) – to add to his collection, now housed in the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Assisted additionally by the efforts of his two dealers, Zborowski and Paul Guillaume (1891-1934), Soutine’s career took off and from the mid-1920s onwards his paintings began to sell for significant sums both at home in Franc and internationally.
A second excursion from Paris in 1923 took Soutine once again to the south of France, this time to the small town of Cagnes-sur-Mer on the fashionable Riviera. Already the residence of Renoir and Soutine’s friend, the Swiss painter, Émile Lejeune (1885–1964), like Céret, Cagnes had a reputation for being an artists’ haunt, with its enticing warm, sunny climate and distinctive Mediterranean light. Its picturesque, cobbled streets, tiled roofs and medieval architecture appealed to Soutine; his paintings from this period depict views of the old town’s residential buildings and churches (with the castle, cafés, restaurants and shops notably absent) and views of narrow lanes and winding streets. In a continued theme from his Céret period, many of these landscapes also feature characterful trees, which are still identifiable today.
Returning to Paris in 1925, and up until the outbreak of the Second World War, Soutine chose to live in a series of increasingly expensive studio-apartments in the Montparnasse, Parc-de-Montsouris and Petit-Montrouge quarters of the city’s 14th arrondissement (see Franklin 2026, 71-86). Ranging from a purpose-built artist’s apartment with heating and hot water on the colourfully-named Passage d’Enfer (‘Passage of Hell’) opposite the southern border of Montparnasse Cemetery, to the Vila Seurat apartment building he shared with American novelist, Henry Miller (1891-1980), these locations attest to the affluence attendant to his increasing commercial success on the Paris and international art scenes. Indeed, his work became a desirable investment for an increasing number of dealers and collectors, all of whom admired his skill both as a draughtsman and colourist along with the vitality of his subject-matter, which focussed on the people, places and objects present in his everyday life.
Some of Soutine’s best-known works in any genre were painted during his last decade and a half in Paris. His (in)famous carcass of beef series of the mid-1920s, for example, was produced when he was renting a studio on the rue du Saint-Gothard in Parc-de-Montsouris. In another example, while living on the Boulevard Edgar-Quinet, Soutine embarked on a series of portraits of sitters in uniform – chefs, waiters, bellboys and valets, etc. – which responded to Paris’s lively café and hotel culture of the 1920s and 30s. Indeed, Soutine was fundamentally interested in ordinary people: his sitters are not models dressed up to look like someone or something else – hence their unstudied poses and often worried or bored expressions; they were ordinary people who temporarily became Soutine’s models.
In the two years preceding the outbreak of the Second World War, Soutine was living with his partner, Gerda Groth (1910-1983) – a German, Jewish refugee from Magdeburg (Garde [1973] 2022, 7–8) – at the Villa Seurat. He had suffered all his life from a chronic illness: a stomach ulcer that became increasingly symptomatic as the years progressed, and which often prevented him from painting for long periods owing to ongoing (sometimes very severe) pain and a heavily restricted diet, which in turn resulted in chronic fatigue. Concerned, Groth sought a formal diagnosis on his behalf and was alarmed to discover that the ulcer had turned cancerous; Soutine was given five to six years to live (Groth quoted in Courthion 1972, 164).
Seeking respite from the stresses of city life, the couple holidayed during the summer of 1939 in the village of Civry-sur-Serein in Yonne Department. When war was declared, however, the couple were placed under house arrest and forbidden from leaving the town. This was to be the beginning of a four-year period of protracted upheaval and trauma in Soutine’s life – including Groth’s internment in Gurs (being German she was an enemy alien) in May 1940 (Garde [1973] 2022, 83) – that ultimately led to his death.
Astoundingly, however, while moving between Civry, Paris and the town of Champigny-sur-Veude (near Tours) in a desperate attempt to evade the Vichy and Nazi authorities and seek treatment from his doctors in Paris, Soutine continued to paint. As his final partner, the artist, Marie-Berthe Aurenche (1906-1960) noted, ‘[h]e would sometimes paint for ten or twelve hours in a single day. Neither the cold nor the storm could stop him’ (Aurenche 1952). Some of his best-known landscapes were made during his time in Civry and Champigny and they evidence his recurrent study of the local arboreal life and the large skies of the flat land surrounding him.
By the end of July 1943, when he was in Champigny, his health was deteriorating at an alarming rate and one day he passed out (Orloff 1951, 20). An ambulance was called and he was first taken to the local hospital in Chinon before being moved to a clinic in Paris in the 16th (APP). Upon arrival, his condition was recognized as life-threatening, a perforated stomach ulcer diagnosed and an operation performed (Garde [1973] 2022, 106). Despite the best efforts of the surgeon, however, Soutine died shortly afterwards. He died at six o’clock in the morning on 9 August.
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While Soutine’s death did not occur while imprisoned by either the Nazi or Vichy regimes, and the cause of his death was the result of the perforation of a pre-existing stomach ulcer, had he not been forced into hiding and had he been able to access medications and treatment in a timely manner, his life could have been extended. As his friend Chana Orloff accurately stated ten years after his death, ‘Soutine died a victim in large measure of Nazi persecution’ (Jean-Pierre 1953).
Soutine’s funeral took place just two days later on 11 August at the Cimetière du Montparnasse (AP 1939-45, 18). In addition to Aurenche and Groth, included amongst those in attendance were: Daniel Tzanck, Jean Cocteau (Warnod 1945), French painter Jean Crotti (1878-1958), Grégoire Michonze (1902-1982), Max Jacob (Courthion 1972, 146) and, most famously, Picasso (Garde and Ragon 1956, 31; Nash 1988, 26). This list speaks to both the strength of the professional respect accorded to Soutine by the artistic community and the bravery of those who openly attended the funeral of a prominent Jewish artist in occupied Paris. His identity as a Parisian artist was cemented when his work was exhibited as part of the 1944 Salon d’Automne – that year also known as the ‘Salon de la Libération’ (Warnod 1944, 1) – and subsequent solo exhibitions in the capital in the postwar years, e.g. Galerie de France (1945), Maison de la Pensée Française (1956) and Galerie Charpentier (1959). Louise Franklin Art Historian and Author Alex Franklin Art Historian and Anthropologist For bibliography and French version Translated to French by Anne Lécharny Cover image: Soutine, around 1935, Le musée d’Art moderne de Céret © L'AiR Arts and Cité Falguière Associations, 2025 |
Chaïm Soutine, Glaïeuls, 1919,
huile sur toile, 56 x 46 cm, Paris, Musée de l'Orangerie, © RMN-Grand Palais |
