RUPERT BUNNY

Mr Robert Haines
Mrs H.M. Henri, Brisbane
Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne
Trevor Bussell, Sydney
Private collection, Perth

Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris, May 1924, cat. 154, illus. as 'Sur le tapis de varech',
Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne, 11-29 May 1981, cat. 25
Trevor Bussell, Sydney, October-November 1985, illus.

David Thomas, Rupert Bunny, Lansdowne Press, Melbourne 1970,cat. 0252, as 'By the Sea' c.1924
Mary Eagle, The Art of Rupert Bunny, Australian National Gallery, Canberra, 1991, p. 104, p.106, Illus.

By 1913 bathing scenes were again on Rupert Bunny's painting agenda - The Sun Bath, a secluded garden scene in the collection of the Bendigo Art Gallery; beside a stream in The Bathers in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, and on the beach in Nu a l'ombrelle. To another he even gave the same title as the work first purchased by the French Government  - Après le bain. The subject had great appeal and held Bunny in its thrall since the very beginnings of his art, through mythological and the big salon subject paintings to these later, more Post-Impressionist paintings. As in Sur le tapis de varech (On the carpet of seaweed), the subject gave him the ideal opportunity to paint the female nude in those intimate moments that so characterised his art. The importance to Bunny of this particular painting, however, is demonstrated in the numerous pencil and oil sketches that went into its realisation. Sketchbooks in the collection of the University of Melbourne record him experimenting with different compositional groupings, carried further in the numerous oil sketches - more than for any other known work by the artist. Another interesting aspect is the broad handling of the paint, figures so freely treated that they have the appearance of a sketch. The reasons are found in the spontaneity Bunny wanted to retain and convey, as well as, no doubt, the effect of modernism on his aesthetics and technique. There is a vivacity in the brush work as Bunny once again delights in the play of light on the female form and flow through the garments, taken up in the pulsating rhythms of the colours and movement, a touch of the sensation of the Ballets Russes in pre-war Paris.

We are most grateful to David Thomas for assistance in cataloguing this work.