MADAM – Your recent auction report (ATG No 2278) suggesting Marcel Dyf (1899-1985) is considered to be among the last of the true Impressionists can hardly be correct and is misleading.
He was working at least 60 years after the start of the French Impressionist movement and the bulk of his work on the market today stems from the 1950s and ‘60s onwards when managed by Frost and Reed in London, who were then his sole agents.
His work has four recurring themes: flowers; the décolletage of Claudine, his younger wife; cornfield landscapes; and harbour scenes on the French Rivera. This was all pleasant commercial stuff, but no more than this. He was not a great artist.