Pavel Tchelitchew

Mrs Francis Robbins Jr, New York
Edwin Hewitt, New York
Lincoln Kirstein, New York
Christie's New York, Impressionist and Modern Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, 26 February 1990, lot 114
Previously in the Georges Bemberg Collection

New York, Museum of Modern Art, Tchelitchew: Paintings and Drawings, 1942, no.41
Buenos Aires, Instituto de Arte Moderno, Pavel Tchelitchew. Pinturas y Dibujos, 15 February – 10 September 1949, no.13
New York, Gallery of Modern Art, Pavel Tchelitchew, 20 March – 19 April 1964, no.142

Exhibition catalogue Tchelitchew: Paintings and Drawings, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1942, p.66, no.42 illustrated in b/w
Exhibition catalogue Pavel Tchelitchew, New York, 1964, p.61, no.142 listed
L.Kirstein, Tchelitchew, Santa Fe, 1994, no.43 illustrated

The sheet has been laid on board. The board has warped and the sheet has slightly buckled in places. There are creases to the centre of the left edge and to the right foot of the figure in the foreground. The sheet has discoloured and there is a layer of surface dirt. There are abrasions and discolourations along the edges. There are some scattered losses, notably to the legs of the reclining figure in the foreground, the legs of the figure on the left and the feet of the figure on the right. There are some minor surface stretches in places. Held in a wooden frame with canvas slip behind glass. Unexamined out of frame.
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Soon after settling in New York in 1934, Tchelitchew and his partner Charles Henri Ford travelled to Italy for the first time. According to Soby's 1942 exhibition catalogue it was while they were staying in Malcesune on the shores of Lake Garda that Tchelitchew painted a series of gouaches of figures and landscapes, among them The Bathers-I, The Bathers-II and The Lorelei. He would later recall the time spent with Charles on Garda as 'diamonds, strung all on one string' (L.Kirstein, Tchelitchew, Santa Fe, 1994, p. 69). 

Tchelitchew had approached the theme of male bathers in 1933 in his large work The Bathers. Returning to this subject-matter in 1935, the artist makes use of his newly-developed triple perspective, which he employed repeatedly throughout 1930s. At the lake, Ford posed both nude and clothed and in Bathers-I he appears as the foreshortened reclining figure in the foreground. The silhouettes are visible behind white towels, reflecting Tchelitchew’s preoccupation with shadows, which was central to his theatre work and in particular his 1933 set design for Balanchine’s Errante.