| Marcel
Dyf
1899-1985
In the late 1950’s when the work of Marcel
Dyf first began to be seen in London and New York, at a price
range of £85 - £135, very little was known about
the man. Dyf had always been a very private person who kept
himself very much to himself, whilst he strove to teach himself
to paint. In no way was he lacking in the social graces, he
was very good looking with an engaging and cultivated personality
and was a constant hit with the opposite sex. He had a sparkle
in his eye that remained undimmed all his life; but teaching
yourself to express your thoughts in line and colour is a very
lonely trait and can often result in the reclusive side of ones
nature becoming predominant.
All the more surprising then, that at the age of
56, most of which time Dyf had spent with no responsibilities
to anybody but himself, he should fall hopelessly, deeply and
so romantically in love with a girl aged 20. Claudine Godat,
who was studying in Cannes was literally swept off her feet
by Dyf’s whirlwind courtship, which continued unabated
throughout their life together, until his death in 1985. They
shared thirty wonderful, magical years and were rarely further
apart than the range of a shouted conversation when she was
posing for him as a scale, in a cornfield, whilst he worked
at his easel. When I first met Claudine in a gallery in London
in 1957, she asked me why so many of the English Victorian painters
put cows in their pictures. I replied that the artists would
use the animals as a scale so that the onlooker could judge
the height of a tree, the size of a cottage or a distance. Claudine
looked thoughtful for a moment and then smiled an impish grin
“I suppose I must be Dyf’s cow!” In truth
Claudine was an immensely important factor and influence where
Dyf’s painting was concerned, thought at that time she
probably did not realise it, and even today would shrug it off.
“Mais non, c’est tout Dyf”. But it was her
youth and her vibrant vitality that provided the catalyst that
Dyf’s painting needed. When she came into his life, she
provided that vital sparkle which up to that point his work
lacked; but which sets him apart from his contemporaries. Claudine
gave his life an exuberance that races through the best of his
works; they appear to glow with their own light source. His
palette changed – became stronger, brighter and he began
to see afresh the drama of changing weather and the patterns
of light and shadow on the landscape below. His very understanding
of how to set a composition became mature and masterful. For
the first time in his life Dyf was responsible for someone he
adorned, and it shows in every stroke.
For two years they continued to live in Cannes,
then decided to move to Paris to be nearer the commercial centre.
Dyf took a studio with a small apartment in Montmârtre,
but just a year later they found what Claudine describes as
the house and studio of their dreams. Situated in Bois-d’Arcy,
just down the road from Versailles, it became the base from
which all their adventures started and which they always came
home to. It’s where Claudine still lives, surrounded by
the pictures that form her personal collection and their things
with which they built their life together.
Dyf’s year would begin in the spring. The
return of the light, the strength of the sun awakening the beauty
of the Ile de France seemed to awaken the artist too. There
were abundant subjects at every turn. The apple orchards coming
into bloom, clear streams, slow rivers and the landscape turning
green and providing a back cloth to wild flowers in profusion;
all caught Dyf’s attention. So began a year’s work
of producing a flow of jewel like canvases vibrant with life
and colour, through the succeeding seasons.
Although Dyf had spent time in Normandy during
his childhood, he had never been to Britanny and it was Claudine
who introduced him to it. It was, in Dyf’s own words “like
being seduced again” with its soft rolling cornfields
sweeping down to the Atlantic. They bought a small house in
Arzon with a long garden at the end of which Dyf built a studio.
Claudine objected that there was no sea view, so Dyf painted
three arches on the garden wall, through which the sea (constantly
blue) appeared with sail boats and a seagull called Philbert
“There” he said – “now you have your
own private view!” Claudine’s sister Jacqueline
and her daughter Corinne now own this little Dyf haven; they
were frequent sitters for Dyf’s ‘dejeuners sur l’herbe’
subjects. Most summers Claudine spends time visiting Arzon,
reliving and recreating her long summers with Dyf. She writes
“The Arzon summers have been a great joy, a place where
we felt like children again. Dyf would walk the shores of the
Golf de Morbihan to greet the rising sun and to find subjects.
Work would be followed by delicious swims in the clear water,
then long, languorous dinners of fish or meat bought in the
local market that morning. Sometimes our dear friend Madame
Rozo (who sold her flowers in the same market) would present
us with a glorious bouquet of sunflowers which set the studio
ablaze and invariably became a subject for Dyf’s imagination.
Often Madame Rozo’s garden itself would be a radiant subject,
along with the golden wheat fields and the silken waters of
the countless inlets and harbour of the bay. I am still surprised
at the number of ‘subjects’. I can still discover
but where, for one reason or another, Dyf did not get to plant
his easel and paint.”
The end of summer and the coming of Autumn would
signal their return to Bois d’Arcy; the car laden with
painted canvases to be “tweaked” in the studio at
home, before being shipped to Dyf's ever increasing circle of
admirers and collectors in the UK and the USA. This was the
time of year when Dyf would paint his wonderfully feminine full
flower pieces; peonies, dahlias, margharites, amenomies and
asters. Autumn was the time when Claudine would pose for Dyf,
sometimes for him to paint those intimate tender studies: “Claudine
à sa toilette” or “Au Boudoir” or sometimes
dressed as “My Fair Lady” or “Chez la Modiste”.
Often they would take a break and travel out of France, perhaps
to Belgium or Holland “to drop a curtsey to the Mâitres
'd’autres fois'". Occasionally they would
venture further afield to visit friends in England or the USA,
but always the portable easel and a supply of blank canvas with
the ever present travelling paint-box would go along for the
journey.
With the arrival of winter, Dyf and Claudine would
migrate to the South of France and Provence, escaping the dark
skies and indoor work to find the warmth of the sun and the
pure light that goes with it. Here Dyf would re-charge his batteries,
perhaps re-visiting those places in Arles and Avignon where
he had spent so much of his youth in the struggle to discover
his talents for himself.
Claudine recalls two of Dyf’s favourite
sayings: “Les marveilleux c’est de s’emerveille”
(What is wonderful is to marvel at things), and “L’ennui
est le vice supreme” (Boredom is the greatest vice). Even
if one never had the privilege of meeting Dyf, to see his pictures
is to know the man. There is so much of his soul in them, that
they speak for him across the years. Asked to sum up her life
with Dyf, Claudine replies without hesitation; “I can
witness that for thirty years, all the seasons we shared seemed
to me like too short a spring."
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