Soutine had come to Paris from Lithuania in 1913 and became friends with Amedeo Modigliani, who made his art dealer Leopold Zborowski sign his friend. In 1919, Zborowski sent Soutine to Céret, where he stayed until 1922 and created more than 100 works, mainly landscapes. They are eruptive, wild and abstract. In 1923, he encouraged Soutine to go to southern France again, to Cagnes-sur-Mer. The result are expressive, almost rhythmic works, very different from the Céret paintings. One of these is the "Landscape in Cagnes" from 1923. While the composition in the Céret paintings appears to burst out of the confining edges and is difficult to read, the motifs in the Cagnes works are recognisable, the painting style more descriptive and calm.
Albert Barnes, the American doctor and art collector, came to Paris in 1922 and bought 75 of Soutine’s paintings. He kept many for his own collection, but also sold a great number in the USA.
When Soutine died in 1943, he was better known in the USA than in Europe. By the early 1950s, his works were in the collections of the Phillips Gallery in Washington, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Chicago Art Institute and other museums throughout the United States. MoMA and the Cleveland Museum of Art had already mounted a major retrospective of his work.
