Sunday

This week of all weeks it has to be Paris, and not louche or sexy Paris but wholesome Paris at its joyful best. This is the Eiffel Tower by Raoul Dufy, painted in gouache in 1937.

Dufy (1887-1953) was hugely prolific and versatile. He produced all sorts of things, including paintings, drawings, illustrations, commercial art, theatre designs, woodcuts and ceramics. He painted huge murals in public buildings, notably for the 1937 World Exhibition in Paris.

Dufy also designed fabrics for Paul Poiret, who I want to say invented haute couture as we understand it, even though Google says it was Charles Worth, but Poiret worked for Worth (and definitely invented doing away with the corset). He (Dufy) also designed furnishing fabrics for the Manufacture de Beauvais. These found their way onto incredible room screens and chairs.

And look at his (👌🏼) menu for a dinner celebrating the liberation of Paris. Fluctuat nec mergitur, across the top, is the city’s motto. I’ve always thought it would make an excellent tattoo - it means ‘tossed by the waves, she does not sink’.

He was from Normandy and arrived in Paris as a young man, heading, like so many artists at the time, for the hills of Montmartre, where he lived until his death. He was enormously influenced by Matisse and the Fauves (again, sorry). Those very vivid blues turns up all the time in his work. He said that blue was the only colour that stayed true to itself - red turned into pink, yellow could look brownish, white easily became grey. He also said that his eyes automatically did away with ugliness.

Anyway: look at the joy in this painting. It sings with gladness. What I find extraordinary is that the image contains several of the 2024 Olympics sites. Who could have foreseen that? How lucky we are to see it.

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