Background
Haim Soutine was born on January 13, 1893 into a very poor Jewish family in the township of Smilavichi (nearly 30 km east to Minsk), Russian Empire.
Haim Soutine was born on January 13, 1893 into a very poor Jewish family in the township of Smilavichi (nearly 30 km east to Minsk), Russian Empire.
He was the tenth among the eleven children of a poor Jewish tailor, who once locked Chaim in the cellar for two days because he took money to buy colored pencils. At the age of ten, he was apprenticed to a tailor, but in 1907 began working as a retoucher for a photographer in Minsk. Soutine one day asked the rabbi of his village to pose for a portrait, and the rabbi’s son was so incensed that he gave Soutine a beating which sent him to hospital and cost the rabbi twenty-five rubles in damages. With this money, Soutine was able to go to Vilna to study art. There, he ate at a soup kitchen, and received some financial assistance from a doctor, whose daughter gave a benefit for Soutine, earning fifty rubles. This was enough for Soutine to go to Paris, where he enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux Arts.
When World War I broke out in August 1914, Soutine obtained a residency permit. He also volunteered for the “workers’ army” but was rejected because of poor health.
In Paris, Soutine lived in the Cité Falguière, where his studio adjoined that of Amedeo Modigliani and the two became drinking companions and close friends. Modigliani introduced Soutine to his art-dealer, the Polish poet Leopold Zborowski, who, enthusiastic about his work, gave Soutine a stipend of five francs a day. Soutine was very critical of his own paintings and destroyed many of them, but Zborowski managed to rescue some, on occasion even sending work to a restorer.
In 1922, an American collector, Albert C. Barnes, was so impressed by Soutine’s work that he bought everything (more than fifty paintings) in Zborowski’s possession, paying 60,000 francs. One of his paintings now hang at the Barnes Foundation at Morion, near Philadelphia.) When Soutine came for his daily five francs, Zborowski increased his stipend to twenty-five francs a day. From then on, Zborowski sold Soutine’s paintings regularly, for good prices.
For a while, Soutine moved frequently, but finally he took a large studio in the boulevard Saint Michel, near a slaughterhouse. Here he painted a scries of paintings of carcasses of beef. Paulette Jourdain, who was his model, assisted him by going to the slaughterhouse every few days to get fresh blood to pour over the carcasses so that they would maintain their color. When inspectors from the health department came to remove the carcasses, Jourdain persuaded them to let the carcasses remain until Soutine finished his paintings, on the condition that they inject the beef with ammonia, as a deodorant.
In Montparnasse, Soutine met a German Jewish refugee, Gerda Groth, who moved into his apartment. In 1940, however, as the German army neared France, the government ordered a round up of all German nationals and Gerda Groth was arrested and sent to an internment camp. Soutine himself received several invitations to take refuge in the United States, but refused.
He met Marie-Berthe Aurenche, the former wife of Max Ernst, in Paris. Believing that as a Jew Soutine was in danger, Aurenche took him to friends who agreed to hide them. They remained for three months, but fearing that the concierge would report them to the Gestapo, fled to the unoccupied zone and settled in Champigny in Touraine.
In 1943, Aurench and Soutine were living in Chinon, when Soutine began to suffer terrible pain from stomach ulcers. At the hospital in Chinon, he was told that he needed an immediate operation. Aurcnche arranged for an ambulance to take them to Paris, as the operation could be performed only there. In order to avoid the police, they were forced to detour, and the trip which should have taken five hours, took more than twenty-four. When they arrived in Paris, Soutine was operated on immediately, but died the next day. Aurenche had Soutine buried in her family plot in the Christian cemetery in Montparnasse. Space in the grave was left for her, and when, in 1960 she committed suicide, she was buried beside him. A cross is engraved on the stone slab she had placed over the grave. Among the few friends who attended Soutine’s funeral were Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Max Jacob, and Gerda Groth, who had recently been released from the internment camp.
Soutine was a painter in the expressionist tradition; his turbulent paintings and bright colors conveyed his own inner tumult. His portraits are often twisted and distorted and his work is always disturbing, but he has become recognized as an out-standing representative of the school of Paris.
Flowers and Fish
Maternity
Parisian Suburb
The Musician
The Room Service Waiter
Girl in Red
Young English Girl
Little girl in pink
Landscape at Cagnes
Still LIfe with Fish and Pitcher
Houses at Ceret
Baker Boy
The Chamber Valet
Portrait of a Woman on a Blue Background
View of Ceret
Landscape with Figures
Self Portrait by Curtain
Still Life with Fish
Chartres Cathedral
Le Rouquin
Still Life with Lamp
Still Life with Soup Tureen
Plane Trees at Céret
Flayed Rabbit
Street of Cagnes-sur-Ner
Little Girl in Blue
Fish and Tomatoes
Plucked Chicken
Old Woman with Dog
Herrings and a Bottle of Chianti
The Red Castle of Céret
Gorge de Loup-sur-Vence
Landscape
Self Portrait
School Boy in Blue
Desolation
The Table
Houses of Cagnes
Portrait of a Woman
Red Houses
The Mad Woman
The Turkey
Houses with Pointed Roofs
Woman in Profile (Portrait of Madame Tennent)
Girl at Fence
Little Girl with Doll
Landscape
Midday Landscape
Ceret Lanscape
The Pastry Cook of Cagnes
Houses by the Sea
Two Children on a Road
Polish Girl
Girl in Blue
Self Portrait with Beard
Suburban Landscape with Red Houses
Gladioli
Two Children on a Road
Portrait of the Sculptor, Oscar Miestchaninoff
Hotel Boy
Lady in blue
Landscape
Portrait of a Woman
Old House near Chartres
Man with Hat
Madeleine Castaing
Polish Woman
Hill at Ceret
Street At Cagnes
Altar Boy
Child in Pink
Young English Girl in Blue
Woman with Arms Folded
Portrait of a Child
Road at Cagnes
Hen and Tomatoes
Ceret Landscape
White House on a Hill
Tree of Vence
Hanging Hare
Little Pastry Cook
Carcass of Beef
Leaning tree
Landscape of the South of France
The Green Dress
Landscape of Cagnes
Still life with Pheasant
Portrait of a Boy
The Philosopher
Madeleine Castaing
Young Man Wearing a Small Hat
The Fiancée
The Cobbler's Wife
Servant Girl in Blue
House at Oiséme
Young Girl in Red Blouse
Paulette Jourdain
Portrait of Emile Lejeune
The Pastry Chef
Ceret Landscape
The Cellist (Serevitsch)
The Mad Woman
Still Life with Herring
Landscape at Cagnes (La Gaude)
White House
Pastry Cook with Red Handkerchief
Madeleine Castaing
Woman in Red
Carcass of Beef
Still Life with Rayfish
Mother and Child
Chickens on a White Cloth
Young Woman
Tree of Vence
Plane Trees at Céret
Portrait of Madame X (also known as Pink Portrait)
Portrait of Moise Kisling
Quotations: "I never touched Cubism myself, you know, although I was attracted by it one time. When I was painting at Ceret and at Cagnes I yielded to its influence in spite of myself, and the results were not entirely banal."