Henri Gervex

Sale: Christie's, London, June 15, 2005, lot 92, illustrated
Acquired at the above sale

Possibly, Paris, Cercle de l'Union Artistique, 1881 and 1882
Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 1885

Jean-Christophe Pralong-Gourvennec, Henri Gervex: 1852-1929, exh. cat., Galerie de Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux; Musée Carnavalet, Paris; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nice, 1992-1993, p. 36, illustrated p. 37 (as location unknown)

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This work is in excellent condition. The painting itself shows no visible retouches or damages, except for one small restored scratch above the thighs of the seated man measuring about half an inch long. The upper right and lower left corners of the frame should be repaired. Otherwise, the work is in beautiful condition and should be hung as is.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

When Édouard Manet submitted his composition, Nana (1877, Kunsthalle Hamburg, fig. 1) to the Salon of 1877, it was deemed by the jury to be contentious to the morality of the time and rejected. Interestingly, it wasn’t the petticoat-wearing subject herself that was objectionable, but the presence of a man in evening dress in the margin of the picture. His attitude, his way of looking at her as she looks to the viewer, make clear that the artist is frankly and daringly representing a courtesan’s room.  Manet’s title is said to have been inspired by his beautiful red-haired model, Anna (who also posed for Pierre-Auguste Renoir), but it is possible that he was inspired by the first appearance of the character Nana in Émile Zola’s L’Assommoir (published the same year), before publishing the eponymous Nana in 1880, the year that the present work was painted.

A year after Manet's rejection, in April of 1878, Henri Gervex’s now famous masterpiece, Rolla (1878, Musée d’Orsay, Paris), was pulled from the Salon on the same charge of immorality. Gervex was a pupil of Alexandre Cabanel’s at the École des Beaux-Arts and a rising star of the Salon. Having earned a second-class medal in 1874, Gervex had won hors concours status, and was theoretically able to have his Salon submissions accepted without fear of veto by the jury. While one might expect that the reclining naked figure scandalized audiences (she would have actually looked at home among the academic nudes at the Salon—her pose is a direct quote of Cabanel’s Birth of Venus), it was the heap of clothes in the lower right that had the power to shock. Degas had recommended that Gervex incorporate this still life. The red corset opened from the front, suggestively protruding cane, and an overturned top hat at its summit told viewers all they needed to know. When the painting was ordered to be removed from the Salon, Degas declared: “You see… they understood that’s she’s a woman who takes her clothes off” (as quoted in Valerie Steele, The Corset, a Cultural History, New Haven, 2005, p. 123). The painting was subsequently shown at Bague’s gallery at 41 rue de la Chaussée-d’Antin and drew an enormous, enthusiastic audience. As Émile Zola later commented, “Gervex, a disciple of Cabanel, was led by the spirit of the age and is now undergoing an interesting evolution. Here, we are witness once again to the victory of naturalist painting” (Émile Zola, “Nouvelles littéraires et artististiques,” Le Messager de l'Europe, June, 1879).

In this composition, Gervex is unequivocally referencing his friend Manet's Nana and quoting from Zola’s literary source. The courtesan in her petticoat stands on the left of the worldly client who sits contemplating her, and to these two figures he adds the servant, Zoé, taken directly from Zola’s Nana. It is clear that the painter took pleasure in following Zola's naturalism and in giving a very marked psychological character to the three protagonists, such as the seated man’s showy costume with shiny ankle-length boots, conspicuously smoking a type of cigarette commonly referred to at the time as “anglaise,” while simultaneously twirling a thick moustache. He is the Prince of Scotland in Zola's novel, and Gervex has made a point of giving him all of the attributes of a British caricature of the period. As for Nana, she is just as coquettish as Manet's prototype, even if Gervex allows himself a few notable differences. While Manet’s Nana confronts the viewer, Gervex's demi-mondaine is much more wily, busily lacing up (or unlacing) her corset, and turned to the mirror in such a way for her knowing smile to be seen by her admirer.  She is checking the effect of her “lures” and the scene is unambiguous: she is very much Nana, "la mouche d'or" (the golden fly).

The present lot is very likely the canvas that was presented in 1881 and 1882 to the Parisian “Cercle de l'Union Artistique,” and is certainly the one which was exhibited in 1885 at the Galerie Georges Petit, where it was much remarked upon. As one critic aptly wrote, “A fine painting of which Mr Zola should be proud to be the owner” (Doctor Véron, “Exposition Galerie Georges Petit,” Annuaire Véron, Poitiers, 1885, p. 222).