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Beloosesky Gallery is interested in purchasing paintings or drawings by Jean Dufy. 
Please call (917) 749-4577 or email us at

From LeHavre and an arts-oriented family of eleven children including the famous Raoul Dufy (1877-1953), Jean Dufy showed artistic ability from childhood.  Throughout his future career, his older brother, Raoul, encouraged him.  Jean not only did fine-art painting but painted theatre sets.  To earn money, he was a clerk for an overseas import business and even served as secretary on a transatlantic liner, La Savoie,which traveled between New York and Le Havre.

In these jobs, Dufy did much walking and observing around the port of Le Havre, and also became fascinated with modernist 'tradition breakers' such as Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso.  

He became a student in Le Havre at the l'Ecole des Beaux Arts, and his teachers included Raoul and A.E. Othon Friesz.  When Raoul moved on to Paris, Jean Dufy dropped out of the Ecole in Le Havre to follow his brother "who remained his true master for the rest of his life." (Kodner)  However, between these moves, he also served in the military from 1910 to 1912.  For the next two years, living in Paris, he became associated with Cubist painters Picasso as well as Georges Braque and poet Guillame Apollinaire.

By 1914, he was exhibiting his early watercolors, "muted tones and somber browns, blues, and reds" mingling "with the hatching technique he inherited from Cézanne by way of his brother Raoul Dufy."  The venue was the Berthe Weill Gallery.  However, that same year, he was drafted for additional military service and was a soldier on horseback.  Being stationed throughout France, he painted many landscape scenes including in the Vosges region where he was treated for war wounds.

Because of this close association, Jean Dufy's work, much of it in ink and watercolor, is often compared to that of his brother.  Like Raoul, he chose Parisien subjects, "country scenes, circuses, horse races, stages and orchestras. . . . Raoul Dufy often dissected each of the elements that he used in his compositions, often with humor or tenderness, if not with acuteness.  Jean, on the other hand, was more sensitive to the entire panorama of the scene represented, i.e. the particularity, the individuality, the 'hands on'.  (Kodner)

Jean Dufy in 1916 worked briefly with his brother in a studio doing textile painting, and then began what became a major component of his career for the next 30 years---porcelain decoration for Haviland in Limoges, France.  For skillful and creative execution of animal and floral designs, he received the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts gold medal in 1925 for a set he designed titled "Chateau de France".

By 1920, he was a member of the Salon d'Automne, where he exhibited in 1920, 1923, 1924, 1927 and 1932.  Also bringing him increasing public attention was gallery representation in Paris at the Galerie Bing and in New York at Balzac and Peris Galleries.  In 1937, he helped his brother, Raoul, with the completion of his assignment to oversee the decoration of the Electric Pavillion for the World's Fair.  Together they did a mural, 600 meters in size, to celebrate electricity.

He established residency in Montmartre, living near the artist, Georges Braque.  In addition to painting and decorative arts, Jean Dufy was a musician, playing the classical guitar, and was a jazz enthusiast, which some critics have linked to his rhythmic, fluid painting style.  The interest in music likely is linked to his father, whose career was accounting for a metallurgy company and who was an amateur musician.  The love of music of Dufy transferred to his artwork, and he did many brightly colored depictions of musicians in orchestra scenes and piano players.  Among his associates were prominent avant-garde composers whose names remain famous such as Francis Poulenc, Arthur Honegger and Eric Satie.

Finding many painting subjects, Jean Dufy traveled extensively in the 1950s, the last decade of his life.  He returned often to his hometown of Le Havre and to his mother's birthplace of Honfleur, as well as to many other locations in Europe and to North Africa.  However, judging by his many scenes of Paris, it was the location that for him was most fascinating: "the streets, the horse-drawn carriages, the Eiffel Tower, the sky, and the Seine." (Bailly)

Jean Dufy died May 12, 1964 in the French village of Boussay.  His wife, Ismérie, had died two months earlier.

Biography from the Archives of AskART



Public Collections

The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Indiana University Art Museum, Indiana
Harvard University Art Museum, Massachusetts
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California
Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA
Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, FL
Brandywine River Museum, Chadds Ford, PA
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI
Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA
County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
The New Orleans Museum of Art, La Nouvelle-Orléans, LO
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
The Greenwich House Music School, New York, NY
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA
Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AR
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC
Museum of Fine Art, Springfield, MA
Washington University Collection, St. Louis, MO
Davis Museum, Wellesley, MA
Muscarelle Museum of Art, Williamsburg, VI
Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, Fort Lauderdale, FL
Vero Beach Museum of Art, Vero Beach, FL
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen, Caen
Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris
Musée national d'Art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Menton, Menton
Musée d'art de Pully, Swiss
The Albertina Museum, Vienna

Exhibition History

Boston Art Museum, Boston, MA, USA

The Chase Gallery, New York, NY, USA (solo)

Wally Findlay Galleries, Chicago, IL, USA (solo)

Raoul Dufy - Jean Dufy, Galerie Reine, New York, NY, USA

Hofstra University, Hempstead, Long Island, NY, USA (solo)

The Marble Arch Gallery, New York, NY, USA (solo)

Recent Paintings, Hammer Galleries New York, NY, USA (solo)

Galerie Abels, Cologne, Germany (solo)

Hammer Galleries, New York, NY, USA (solo)

Dominion Gallery, Montreal, Canada (solo)

Galerie Barreiro Stiebel, Paris, France (solo)

Van Diemen-Lillienfeld Gallery, New York, NY, USA (solo)

Perls Galleries, New York, NY, USA (solo)

James Vigeveno Galleries, Westwood Hills, Los Angeles, CA, USA (solo)

Niveau Gallery, New York, NY, USA (solo)

Georges de Braux, Inc., Philadelphia, PA, USA (solo)

Old Paris Gallery, Boston, MA, USA (solo)

Galerie Jos. Hessel, Paris, France (solo)

Georges de Braux Inc., Philadelphia, PA, USA (solo)

Galerie A Barreiro, Paris, France (solo)

The Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR, USA

Perls Galleries, New York, NY, USA (solo)

Balzac Galleries, New York, NY, USA (solo)

Galerie Bing et Cie, Paris, France (solo)

Grand Palais des Champs-Elysées in the Salon d'Automne, Paris, France

Galerie Vavin-Raspail (February 4 to 20) Paris, France (solo)


Galerie Berthe Weill, Paris, France (solo)