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Lot Essay
The verso of this sheet was page XXXI from the sketchbook CP I.
Gertrude Berthold (Cézanne und die alten Meister, Stuttgart, 1958) proposed that Cézanne based this bather on the Dead Christ by the Spanish painter Alonso Cano (1601-1667). Cézanne would have known the work from an engraving that was reproduced in Charles Blanc, Ecole espagnole, Paris, 1869, a seminal volume that contributed to the intense interest on the part of many 19th century French artists in Spanish painting of the Baroque period. Chappuis (op. cit., 1973) cited Berthold as well, and Rewald endorsed this view in his entry to the related watercolour, RWC 124 (sale Christie's, New York, 6 May 1998, lot 110; fig. 1). Chappuis' dating of the drawing places it after the watercolour, and this sketch may represent an interim stage between the watercolour and the figure's altered appearance in later bather paintings, R 665, 666, 747, 750, 754 and 755, all dating from the first half of the 1890s.
Gertrude Berthold (Cézanne und die alten Meister, Stuttgart, 1958) proposed that Cézanne based this bather on the Dead Christ by the Spanish painter Alonso Cano (1601-1667). Cézanne would have known the work from an engraving that was reproduced in Charles Blanc, Ecole espagnole, Paris, 1869, a seminal volume that contributed to the intense interest on the part of many 19th century French artists in Spanish painting of the Baroque period. Chappuis (op. cit., 1973) cited Berthold as well, and Rewald endorsed this view in his entry to the related watercolour, RWC 124 (sale Christie's, New York, 6 May 1998, lot 110; fig. 1). Chappuis' dating of the drawing places it after the watercolour, and this sketch may represent an interim stage between the watercolour and the figure's altered appearance in later bather paintings, R 665, 666, 747, 750, 754 and 755, all dating from the first half of the 1890s.