Chaim Soutine ~ The Little Pastry Chef and other Pastry Chefs

Chaim Soutine painted a number of other pastry chefs in addition to The Little Pastry Chef at the Portland Art Museum. The one shown on the left from the Kunstmuseum Basel is a small almost square portrait (26 x 20 in). The chef seems to be both collapsing and distorted at the same time much like the chef above. He does seem much younger than the one in Portland and the painting's title ranges from The Pastry Chef to Baker Boy. Soutine painted it in 1919. The one shown below carries the same title as The Little Pastry Chef here in Portland and was painted in 1922, a year later.

Later in 1927, Soutine evidently painted yet another pastry chef and its title is remarkably The Pastry Chef. Like the other chefs, this one's right shoulder is tilted slightly up. Unlike the other chef paintings, there's a lack of red here. The one from Portland punches red with the use of red in the background. Each of the other two chefs are holding something red. By 1927, red seems to have dropped from Soutine's palette as a front running color. This definitely seems to be calmest of the compositions, the one with the least churning abstraction and build up of color.