Marie Laurencin

Guillaume Apollinaire, Paris
Paul Rosenberg, Paris
Georges Bénard, Paris
Sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, June 9, 1933, no. 50
Georges Bernheim, Paris
Victor Bossuat, Paris
Jean-Claude Bellier, Paris
Acquired from the above by the present owner in the 1970s

Paris, Galerie Paul Rosenberg, Marie Laurencin, 1921, no. 5
Tokyo, Isetan, Marie Laurencin, 1978, no. 8
Paris, Grand Palais, Guillaume Apollinaire, 1980, no. 80, illustrated

Roger Allard, Marie Laurencin, Paris, 1921, illustrated p. 31
René Swob, "Marie Laurencin", in l'Amour de l'art, Paris, August 1921, p. 253
Albert Flament, "Arabesques sur Marie Laurencin", in La Renaissance de l'Art Français, Paris, 1924, p. 479
Tai Kanbara, Marie Laurencin, Tokyo, 1927, no. 30
Maurice Reynard, Anthologie de la Peinture en France de 1906 à nos jours, Paris, 1927, illustrated p. 201
Daniel Marchesseau, Marie Laurencin, Tokyo, 1980, no. 27
Daniel Marchesseau, Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre de Marie Laurencin, Tokyo, 1986, no. 96, illustrated p. 86

The first owner of the present work was the renowned French poet and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire whom Marie Laurencin first met in 1907 through his friend Pablo Picasso. Laurencin and Apollinaire soon started a passionately romantic, and mutually inspiring, affair. While Laurencin was Apollinaire’s muse, the poet also inspired the painter. A poem published in 1913 may be the source of inspiration for the present work: "plus tard dans un bal champêtre, les couples mains sur les épaules dansèrent au son aigre des cythares" (Guillaume Apollinaire, Alcools, 1913). The bucolic setting of the present work and the languid movements of the women and animals certainly exemplifies the idealized and poetic image of a bal champêtre.

Le Bal Champêtre is one of the artist's most iconic works. It bears all the elements that make Marie Laurencin’s style unique: the complex structure of the composition and the play on eye contact, the gracious figures, and the delicate pink, blue and green shades that prefigure her later style. It is an impressive work by its sheer size and a pendant to the much acclaimed Bal Elégant which sold in the Salon des Indépendants in 1913 and brought Laurencin to the forefront of Parisian artistic circles.

Fig. 1 Marie Laurencin, Apollinaire et ses amis (2nd version), 1909, oil on canvas Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris