At eighteen years old, Dufy studied in Le Havre – his home town – at the École des Beaux-Arts (municipal art school), later winning a scholarship to study at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Here, he crossed paths with Othon Friesz and studied under Léon Bonnat.

By 1901, the artist had showcased works at the Exhibition of French Artists.

Although Dufy’s early work was stylistically Impressionist, after seeing Matisse’s Luxe, calme et volupté in 1905 – what he called, ‘this miracle of creative imagination in colour and line’ – he began to paint in a Fauvist style.

By 1920 however, this had evolved through Dufy’s engagement with the work of Cézanne and Pablo Picasso, whereby his compositions became flatter, almost deconstructed.

By the mid-1920s, Dufy had achieved significant success also as a commercial artist and illustrator. Throughout the decade, Dufy’s work was included in books written by Guillaume Apollinaire and Stéphane Mallarmé. With an invested interest in decorative arts and with commercial success, Dufy set up a cloth-printing studio. At this time, he also produced murals for public buildings and a large number of tapestries and ceramic designs.

What I wish to show when I paint is the way I see things with my eyes and in my heart

Dufy’s sustained interest in how best to convey light through colour as particularly manifest in his later series of works depicting horse races, or regattas such as in Le Royal Yacht Squadron, Cowes, Isle of Wight (1934) or Régates à Henley (1933) . In his watercolours, Dufy exemplifies his typical inclination to sketch outlines set against distinct, thin layers of brightly coloured paint. These works showcased an idiosyncratic, looser, and naïve style, where Dufy employed rapid motion which has been likened to stenographic notation.

By following the light of the sun, one wastes his time. The light in painting is altogether something else, it is a light of repartition, of composition, a colour-light.”(Quoted in the catalogue of the exhibition “Raoul Dufy – Le Plaisir” – Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris). 

Raymond Cogniat, Raoul Dufy, Flammarion, Lugano, Italie, 1967

Raoul Dufy, Le Peintre, La Décoration, La Mode, Exhibition Catalogue, French Academy in Rome, 1996

Raoul Dufy, Le Plaisir, Exhibition Catalogue, Modern Art Museum Paris, 2008