LE HAVRE, FRANCE.-The Musée Malraux presents the Hélène Senn-Foulds donation. The amateur collections of Charles-Auguste Marande and Olivier Senn, and the works from two artists’ studios, those of Eugène Boudin and Raoul Dufy, will share the museum’s walls. In 1900, Louis Boudin gave 220 sketches, what was left of his brother Eugéne’s studio, to the city of Le Havre. In 1936, Charles-Auguste Marande left the museum his collection of Impressionist and Fauvist works, sixty-three paintings and twenty-five drawings. In 1963, it was Raoul Dufy’s wife who gave her husband’s native town 70 works, spanning from his Fauvist period until after the war. The donation by Héléne Senn-Foulds of her grandfather’s collection, Olivier Senn, completes the collection already begun in an exemplary manner.

Born in Le Havre in 1864, Olivier Senn, the director of cotton companies, participated actively to its local life. A prosperous town with a thriving port, Le Havre soon offered a cultural life of high quality, to the rhythm of exhibits to which the Fauves in particular participated. His first known purchases were three works by Camille Pissarro, and a painting by Renoir, «Femme vue de dos» (Woman seen from the back). His taste for the Impressionists and the art of landscapes had already been defined. His «avant-guarde» interests gave rise to some ironic remarks around him. In 1905, at the Salon des Indépendants, the famous «Cage aux fauves», his father-in-law bought five works among the «zaniest and the ugliest» for him. Thanks to this gift the museum welcomes today an extraordinary Fauvist landscape by Derain, «Bougival».