Femmes s'habillant

Details

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)
Femmes s'habillant
oil on paper laid down on canvas
8¾ x 13in. (22.3 x 33.1cm.)
Painted circa 1867

Provenance

Camille Pisarrro, Paris; his sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 3 December 1928, lot 74 (illustrated as 'Trois Baigneuses').
Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris.
L'Art Moderne, Lucerne; sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 20 June 1935, lot 22 (illustrated as 'La Toilette').
Galerie Beyeler, Basel.
Anon. sale, Galerie Fischer, Lucerne, 18 November 1977, lot 1768.
Anon. sale, Galerie Lempertz, Cologne, 6 May 1978, lot 95.
Anon. sale, Sotheby's London, 2 December 1982, lot 407.

Literature

G. Rivière, Le maître Paul Cézanne, Paris 1923, p. 197 (where listed as 'Les femmes au bain').
M. Raynal, Cézanne, Paris 1936 (pl. xx).
J. Rewald, Amour de l'Art, May 1936 (fig. 100).
L. Venturi, Cézanne, son art - son oeuvre, vol. I, Paris 1936, no. 93, (illustrated vol. II, pl. 24).
J. Rewald, The paintings of Paul Cézanne, New York 1996, vol. I no. 121 (illustrated vol. II, p. 41).

Exhibited

Venice, Biennale, 1920, no. 1.
Paris, Galerie Bernheim Jeune, 1934.
Basel, Galerie Beyeler, Impressionnistes, 1967, no. 1.
Basel, Galerie Beyeler, Petits formats, 1967-69, no. 17 (illustrated).
London, Royal Academy of Arts, Cézanne, The Early Years 1859-1872, April-August 1988, no. 28 (illustrated p. 127); this exhibition later travelled to Paris, Musée d'Orsay, September 1988-January 1989 and Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, January-April 1989.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Lot Essay

Cézanne's early works executed in the decade after his first arrival in Paris have proved difficult to date with accuracy. However, the close relation of the figure group in the present work to that of the nymphs in L'Enlèvement (Rewald 121; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), a work dated 1867 by the artist, would seem to justify Lawrence Gowing's similar dating for this picture in his Cézanne - The Early Years exhibition.

Femmmes s'habillant was first owned by Camille Pissarro, who had known Cézanne from his time at the independent Académie Suisse in the 1860s. Pissarro was among the very first collectors of Cézanne's work - the present work may indeed have been a gift from the artist - and Femmes s'habillant remained in his collection until his death. It was included as lot 74 in Pissarro's posthumous sale in 1928 (see fig. 1). Four preparatory drawings for the figures in Femmes s'habillant are also extant, and all were orginally in Pissarro's collection (Chappuis 201-204).

More from Impressionist, Modern and Post War Art

View All