(Le Havre 1901–1985 Paris)
Vache, 1954, signed and dated, mixed media with ink and gouache on paper, 49 x 40 cm, framed

Provenance:
E. T. Power, London
Private Collection, London (by descent)
Hopkins Custot Gallery, London –
acquired from the above by the present owner in 2012 –
Private Collection, Switzerland

Literature:
Max Loreau, Catalogue des travaux de Jean Dubuffet : Vaches - Petites statues de la vie précaire, Fascicule X, Weber Editeur, 1969, no 118, ill. page 92.

..I’ll come back to the cows now. First, I must say that the sight of this animal gives me an inexhaustible sense of well-being because of its radiating calm and serenity. I can also say that pastures, and even simply the color green – because of the cows, I suppose, by an unconscious association of ideas – has a comforting and soothing effect on me ...”.

Jean Dubuffet in : Max Loreau, Catalogue des travaux de Jean Dubuffet: Vaches- Petites statues de la vie précaire, 1969, pages 124 – 125.

Vaches. herbe, frondaisons (Cows, grass. foliage). Summer 1954 and following months

From the beginning of July 1954, as my wife, for reasons of health, was living on the outskirts of Clermont-Ferrand, I often had occasion to drive along the road between Paris and Auvergne, and to take long solitary walks in the countryside around the village where she was being cared of. In this village I had at my disposal a little place which I fitted up as a studio. Once more I became preoccupied with country subjects – fields, grassy pastures, cattle, carts and the work of the fields – all things I had treated with enthusiasm in 1943 and 1944. As formerly, I loved spending hours watching the cows and afterwards drawing them from memory, or even, but much more rarely, from life...