Still Life with Pears and Lemons
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Watercolor and ink on paper, inscribed and signed lower left, dated Perpignan, 23 February 1946. Dedicated to a Mademoiselle Oury. Three golden-green pears, a lemon, and a round teal-green fruit sit on a draped white and blue cloth. The drawing is rapid and calligraphic with thin ink lines defining the contours of the fruit while transparent washes of yellow-green, teal, blue, and gray fill the shapes loosely, bleeding past the outlines. The paper is left bare in large areas. Dufy's watercolor technique was essentially stenographic; the line and the color operate independently, with the washes laid down first and the drawing placed on top, the two not quite aligned. Gertrude Stein described his work simply: "One must meditate about pleasure. Raoul Dufy is pleasure."