PAUL CÉZANNE | Baigneurs

Ambroise Vollard, Paris 
Georges Moos, Geneva 
Private Collection, Sweden
Paul Haim, Paris 
Jacques Lipchitz, New York & Paris
Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York
Acquired from the above by 2008

Humlebaek, Louisiana Museum of Art, Cézanne & Giacometti: Paths of Doubt, 2008, no. 50, illustrated in color in the catalogue

John Rewald, The Paintings of Paul Cézanne, Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1996, vol. I, no. 863, catalogued p. 515; vol. II, no. 863, illustrated p. 303
Walter Feilchenfeldt, Jayne Warman & David Nash, The Paintings of Paul Cézanne: An Online Catalogue Raisonné, https://www.cezannecatalogue.com/catalogue/entry.php?id=838, no. 961 (accessed on September 29, 2019)

This work is in very good condition. The canvas is unlined. A slight dent to the lower edge. Some light surface dirt and handling marks in places. Under UV light, there are some minor specks of what appear to be inpainting scattered throughout the white background. There are some minor specks to the standing figure's belly and breast. There are two small strokes of inpainting in the extreme upper right corner.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

The theme of bathers preoccupied Cézanne from the 1870s onward and, as the most important consistently recurring theme in his oeuvre, provided a focus for his creative energy. This groundbreaking group of works revolutionized the traditional concept of representing the human figure and proved crucial to the development of twentieth-century art. According to Cézanne's new visual language, the human body, far from aspiring to the classical ideal so long pursued by European artists since Antiquity, becomes the result of a pictorial process of construction, increasingly integrated into the picture's context. 

In the 1890s, Cézanne preferred to rely on his repertoire of studies of bathers and pictures from earlier periods. When Francis Jourdan visited him in 1904, Cézanne indicated that he had long stopped asking his models to remove their clothes: "the painting...is in here, he added, beating his brow" (quoted in Gottfried Boehm, "A Paradise created by Painting," in Paul Cézanne, The Bathers, Basel, 1989, p. 18). Cézanne's work had thus taken on a conceptual quality, based on reality only in the loosest sense.

The compositional origins for the present picture stretch back to Cézanne's Zola-inspired figurative works of 1868-70, such as La Tentation de Saint Antoine and Déjeuner sur l'herbe (see fig. 1). The standing nude appears in several important paintings from this series, and the pose of the twisted body clearly held a fascination for the artist (see fig. 2). The vivid blue coloration and dynamism of its execution distinguish this work from other related studies.