Among the great masters of Impressionism, Renoir stands unparalleled in his devotion to the female form, more than any other avant-garde painter of the late nineteenth century aside from Degas. Renoir is often associated with the rose-coloured Rubensian compositions of the 1910s, and while the nude would come to be known as his archetypal subject matter, he seldom turned to the theme during his earlier years. Baigneuse accoudée epitomizes the artist’s exceptional handling of the timeless, sensual nude, a subject that would continue to preoccupy Renoir for the rest of his career.
The 1880s mark an important period in which Renoir returned repeatedly to the subject of the female nude in a landscape, exploring it in a revolutionary manner as he attempted to merge his admiration of the works of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, monumentality, modernism and of line. Before the artist turned forty, his pictures of nudes were few and far between. The present work was painted in 1882, the artist’s forty-first year, which was a transformational moment in his approach to this subject.
In contrast to the tenets adopted by Renoir’s contemporaries, the porcelainlike nude in the present lot is deemed the primary source of interest, dominating the picture plane. Seated in profile with legs crossed, the bather coquettishly turns her face towards the artist with her eyes bashfully looking downwards. A sister picture of the present lot featuring remarkable similarities in regards to pose, composition, sitter, setting, style and palette, is situated in the Musee Marmottan Monet in Paris. Entitled Bather Seated on a Rock and also painted in 1882, the comparable work was previously owned by Claude Monet, a fellow artist and friend of Renoir’s.
In 1881, Renoir travelled through Italy, where he encountered numerous revelations. He was particularly moved by Raphael's frescoes in Rome and the ancient wall paintings of Pompeii in the museum in Naples. Smitten by the informal elegance and sense of monumentality of these nudes, Renoir turned to the subject with a sense of rejuvenation and vigour, producing figures that were more crisply rendered and sculptural in nature. Renoir said:
“I was tired of the skill of the Michelangelos and the Berninis: too many draped figures, too many folds, too many muscles! I like painting best when it looks eternal without boasting about it: an everyday eternity, revealed on the street corner: a servant girl pausing a moment as she scours a saucepan and becoming a Juno on Olympus”
From this point onwards, the bather would become one of Renoir’s primary subjects.
Though the figure in the present lot is rendered with sweeping, impressionist brushstrokes, Renoir abandons his light-driven treatment of his Impressionist period. Influenced by a subtle palette and precision of form in the works of Renaissance masters, as well as the coloration seen in the works of French Rococo artists, Renoir began experimenting with softer tones, as seen in the present lot. Emile Verhaeren, a contemporary poet and art critic of Renoir, wrote of this period in Renoir’s oeuvre:
“Here... is an utterly new vision, a quite unexpected interpretation of reality to solicit our imagination. Nothing is fresher, more alive and pulsating with blood and sexuality, than these bodies and faces as he portrays them. Where have they come from, those light and vibrating tones that caress arms, necks, and shoulders, and give a sensation of soft flesh and porousness? The backgrounds are suffusions of air and light; they are vague because they must not distract us…”
The spatial relationship between the figure and the impressionistically painted landscape is intentionally ambiguous. Though Renoir had eagerly celebrated the setting of contemporary Paris in his works of clothed, fashionable women, he keeps the background deliberately vague in the present lot, unconstrained by indications of a specific era. The white cloth that the figure sits on echoes the artfully draped cloths which populate the paintings of the Renaissance. Liberated from identifying characteristics, the simplicity of the nymph-like nude in Baigneuse accoudée makes her relevant to all time periods. She can be seen as both modern and classical. Renoir explained:
The simplest subjects are eternal. A nude woman getting out of the briny deep or out of her bed, whether she is called Venus or Nini, one can invent nothing better…”
As such, Renoir imbues a sense of timelessness to the theme of the bather. This series of monumental nudes in an amorphous natural backdrop would culminate in Renoir’s Les Grandes Baigneuses, now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Baigneuse accoudée was previously in the collection of the writer and critic Arsène Alexandre, a friend of Renoir who would later write the preface for an exhibition of the artist’s work in 1892, the first occasion when the French State acquired one of his pictures. Alexandre wrote,
“[Renoir] has been exquisitely attentive and sensitive in his rendering of the clear, happy eyes of a child, the red mouths of women, the dazzling harmony of flowers... Furthermore, he placed them in lovingly conceived settings, under tender greenery, where rays of sunlight play and shatter in reflections, or else among personal finery and rare ornaments which he has embellished with his colour - or, lastly, intoxicated and almost hesitant, in a setting richer still, though indeterminate: in hazy atmospheres all shimmering with gold, emeralds and rubies”
Alexandre advised Renoir to accept the Légion d'honneur (see S. Monneret, L'Impressionnisme et son époque: Dictionnaire international, vol. I, Paris, 1987, pp. 4-5).
The work was subsequently owned by Julius Stern, a banker who served as a leading patron of modern art in Germany during the early twentieth century. His collection would encompass works by artists such as Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh, many of which now grace the walls of international museums. Baigneuse accoudée was included in numerous important post-war exhibitions and was featured in early publications dedicated to the Impressionists at the beginning of the twentieth century.
要數最熱衷於描繪女性形體的印象派大師，非雷諾瓦莫屬，其熱愛之情，是德加以外的19世紀晚期先鋒派畫家所無法比擬的。人們常把雷諾瓦和 1910 年代魯本斯的玫瑰色調作品聯繫在一起，儘管雷諾瓦早年甚少以裸女入畫，但裸女畫被廣認為其典型題材。《坐姿浴女》展現了雷諾瓦以超凡技巧繪出女子動人軀體，是裸女主題中的典範之作，在雷諾瓦創作生涯的後半段，此主題一直在他腦中縈繞不去。
1880年代，雷諾瓦反復描摹風景之中的裸女，他以創新破格的手法探索此主題，試圖融匯他所欽佩的尚．奧古斯特．多米尼克．安格爾風格、千古不朽的性質、現代主義及線條美感。在藝術家踏入40歲前，他只創作了寥寥數幅裸女畫。本作繪於1882年，其時藝術家41歲，見證了他轉向創作此主題的重要時刻。
有別於同代人所持的原則，雷諾瓦描繪的焦點集中於女子，本作中，女子裸露的肌膚如玲瓏美瓷，佔滿畫面。浴女交叉雙腿，展示側坐的身影，她風情萬種地把臉轉向藝術家，又靦腆地低下頭。此畫有一姐妹作，無論姿勢、構圖、坐的方式、背景、風格，抑或色調，都十分相似，有著異曲同工之妙。這幅姐妹作名為《坐在石上的浴女》，亦是1882年作品，現藏於巴黎瑪摩丹莫内美術館，此前曾屬雷諾瓦的藝術家好友——克勞德．莫內收藏。
1881年，雷諾瓦遊歷意大利，在那裡他靈感湧現，參觀羅馬的拉斐爾濕壁畫和拿坡里博物館的龐貝古老壁畫時，他被深深打動。他迷上了這些裸女畫所蘊含的不拘禮節的優雅和永恆不朽的感覺，內心燃起澎湃的熱情，轉向創作這個主題，繪畫出一個個線條利落而帶有雕塑感的軀體。雷諾瓦曾言：
「我厭倦了米開朗基羅和貝尼尼的技巧：太多下垂的形體，太多褶痕，太多肌肉！我喜歡那些不張揚炫耀而永垂不朽的繪畫，那是一種日常的永恆，可能出現在街角，如一個女僕刷洗平底鍋時，停頓片刻，變成奧林匹斯聖山上的朱諾。」
從那時起，浴女成為了雷諾瓦的重要主題之一。
雖然本作中的人物是以輕柔飄逸、印象主義風格的筆觸畫成，但雷諾瓦摒棄了自己在印象主義時期追求光效的處理方式。文藝復興時期大師的作品善用細膩的色調和精確的形態，而法國洛可可藝術家用色柔美，啟發雷諾瓦開始嘗試運用更柔和的色彩，本作中所見正是他這方面的實踐。當代詩人兼藝評人埃米爾．維爾哈倫曾評論雷諾瓦這時期的作品，他寫道：
「這裡……是全新的視野，其對現實的詮釋出人意表，喚起我們的想像力。他描繪的這些胴體與面孔極致新穎、生動，隨著血液和性慾振動著，任何他物都無可媲美。那些在手臂、脖子、肩膀上顫動的光與色，讓人彷彿感受到肉體的柔軟和細緻，究竟是從何而來？背景中氤氳裊裊，光線瀰漫，朦朧的意境是為免分散我們的注意力……」
人物與印象主義風格的景觀所構成空間關係含糊不清，此乃藝術家故意而為之。雷諾瓦那些以穿著時尚的女子為題的作品多熱衷描繪當代巴黎場景，但本作卻故意不明確刻畫背景，使之不囿於某特定時代。畫中女子所坐著的白布令人想起文藝復興時期繪畫中輕盈垂墜的棉布，兩者巧妙呼應。褪去時代特徵，《坐姿浴女》的重點落在寧芙一般的裸體女子身上，簡單純粹。她是現代的，也是古典的，任何時代的人都會覺得她充滿親切感。雷諾瓦曾解釋：
「最簡單的主題往往才能歷久不衰。一個裸體女子從海中來，或坐於床邊，無論她的名字是維納斯抑或妮妮，美好如斯，舉世無雙……」
如是者，雷諾瓦為浴女主題注入永恆感。這系列背景微茫的裸女畫，歷久彌新，當中以雷諾瓦的《大浴女》為巔峰之作，現藏於費城藝術博物館。
《坐姿浴女》曾是作家兼評論家亞森．亞歷山大（Arsène Alexandre）的藏品，他是雷諾瓦的好友，後來為雷諾瓦1892年的作品展覽撰寫序言，法國政府在這場展覽上首次購藏雷諾瓦的作品。亞歷山大寫道：
「（雷諾瓦）敏於捕捉孩子清澈快樂的眼睛、女人的紅唇、花卉的繽紛和諧……除此以外，他會將這些美好之物置於精心構思的佈景之中，例如置身在在嫩綠的枝葉下，一縷縷陽光灑落其間；或者穿戴由藝術家以顏色點綴的華麗衣服及飾物；又或者，場景迷漫而模糊，朦朧中閃爍著黃金、綠寶石和紅寶石的光芒。」
亞歷山大亦曾建議雷諾瓦接受法國榮譽軍團勳章（S．蒙納雷：《印象派及其時代：國際詞典》卷一，巴黎，1987年，頁4-5）。
作品其後為銀行家朱利葉斯．斯特恩（Julius Stern）所珍藏，他是20世紀初德國現代藝術的主要贊助人。保羅．塞尚、埃德加．德加、保羅．高更、克勞德．莫內、巴布羅．畢加索和文森．梵谷等藝術家的作品都在斯特恩的藏品之列，當中不少現由世界知名博物館收藏或展出。《坐姿浴女》曾納入多場舉足輕重的戰後展覽，以及出現在多本專論20世紀初印象派畫家的刊物中。