White House

Chaim Soutine completed this view of a white house with his characteristic turbulent, almost violent brushwork. The building seems to twist and writhe against a stormy sky, its walls rendered with thick impasto that transforms solid architecture into pure emotional expression. Trees and foliage surge around the structure like waves, their forms distorted by the artist's agitated handling of paint.

Soutine painted many landscape views during extended stays in the French countryside, particularly at Céret in the Pyrenees and Cagnes-sur-Mer on the Riviera. His distorted perspectives and swirling, energetic surfaces brought an Expressionist intensity to the Provençal landscape tradition that Cézanne and Van Gogh had explored before him. This painting now hangs at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris, alongside Monet's famous Water Lilies murals and other School of Paris works.