Henley, régates aux drapeaux

Henley, régates aux drapeaux, at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris, depicts the Henley Royal Regatta on the Thames — an annual fixture of English social life that Dufy visited several times from the late 1920s onward. The regatta's combination of coloured pennants, racing shells, and festive crowd made it an ideal subject for his celebratory visual language, and his Henley paintings are among his most ebullient works. Painted around 1935, this flag-filled version captures the pageantry of the occasion with the precision of an artist who had found exactly the right subject for his gifts.

The composition is organised around the rhythmic repetition of flags and pennants, whose vertical forms create a colourful pattern above the river and its boats. Dufy's drawn line is at its most energetic here, racing across the colour washes to define the banners, boats, and distant crowd with economical vitality.