Paul Cézanne

Family of the artist
Wildenstein & Co., New York
Sale: Christie's, London, 6th May 1998, lot 110
Galerie Jan Krugier, Ditesheim & Cie., Geneva
Acquired from the above by the present owner

London, Wildenstein Galleries, Homage to Paul Cézanne, July 1939, no. 52
New York, M. Knoedler & Co., Cézanne Watercolours, April 1963, no. 9, illustrated in the catalogue

George Rivière, Le Maître Paul Cézanne, Paris, 1923, recto illustrated p. 103
Lionello Venturi, Cézanne, son art - son œuvre, Paris, 1936, vol. I, no. 905, vol. II,  recto illustrated pl. 282
Alfred Neumeyer, Cézanne Drawings, New York & London, 1958, p. 39, recto illustrated pl. 15
Adrien Chappuis, The Drawings of Paul Cézanne, London, 1973, vol. I, no. 441, catalogued p. 138; vol. II., verso illustrated pl. 441
John Rewald, Paul Cézanne, The Watercolours, Boston, 1983, no. 124, recto illustrated p. 114
 

Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down. The top edge is slightly uneven. Apart from some slight discolouration to the extreme edges, this work is in good original condition.
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comp- verso of the present work: 086D07009_3K5CF

From 1870 till his death in 1906, the Arcadian subject of the Bathers was a constant preoccupation for Cézanne, and these two nudes, Baigneur descendant dans l'eau on the recto and Etude de baigneur on the verso, represent two of the most arresting figures that populate his studies. The figure on the recto is one of a number of variations which appear in the series of preparatory studies for the Paris Baigneurs in the Musée D'Orsay (fig. 1). The model for this figure may have been Sebastiano del Piombo's Christ in Limbo or Alonzo Cano's Dead Christ, and indicate Cézanne's admiration for the Venetian and Spanish masters of the pastoral tradition.

Whilst many of Cézanne's nudes retain an antique grace, his Baigneurs also represent an iconoclastic challenge to the classical tradition. Rather than evoking the lyric mood through literary allusion and emotional interaction between the figures, the roughness of the draughtsmanship of Baigneur descendant dans l'eau and Etude de baigneur highlights Cézanne's aspiration to painting "nature au point de vue de tableau". Beauty for Cézanne was a function of the technical process of painting, and his Baigneurs are not rendered in accordance with the harmonious proportions of the classical nude, but abstract principles of pictorial harmony which are independent of the subject. Thus Cézanne's focus on the reality of the artistic process results in a depiction of the nude in which beauty resides in the rhythms of form and colour rather than the mimetic or emotive nature of the subject.

COMP: 425D07009_COMP
Paul Cézanne, Baigneurs, 1892-94, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris