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Property from the Doris Duke Collection, Sold to Benefit the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation*

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947)

Nu à l'arrosoir or Toilette à la campagne

Details

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947)
Nu à l'arrosoir or Toilette à la campagne
signed 'Bonnard' (upper left)
oil on cradled panel
18 x 14½ in. (45.7 x 36.8 cm.)
Painted circa 1902

Provenance

Anon. sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 29 May 1929, lot 19.
Andre Weil, New York (1944).
Anon. sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, 26 April 1972, lot 42.
Acquired at the above sale by the late owner.

Literature

C. Terrasse, Bonnard, Paris, 1927, p. 205 (illustrated, p. 47; dated circa 1908).
A. Fontainas, Bonnard, Paris, 1928 (illustrated).
J. and H. Dauberville, Bonnard, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint révisé et augmenté, Paris, 1992, vol. I*, p. 264, no. 274 (illustrated).

Special notice

Seller explicitly reserves all trademark and trade name rights and rights of privacy and publicity in the name and image of Doris Duke. No buyer of any property in this sale will acquire any right to use the Doris Duke name or image. Seller further explicitly reserves all copyright rights in designs or other copyrightable works included in the property offered for sale. No buyer of any property in the sale will acquire the rights to reproduce, distribute copies of, or prepare derivative works of such designs or copyrightable works.

Further details

*This lot may be tax exempt from sales tax as set forth in the Sales Tax Notice at the back of the catalogue.

Lot Essay

Bonnard had occasionally painted nudes or partially robed women engaged in their toilette during the 1890s, usually seen in the dark tonalities of a lamp-lit interior (see lot 222). The present painting, however, marks the emergence of a new subject, the full- length nude seen during her daily ablutions, set in a room flooded with natural light. The theme may have captured Bonnard's attention during a recent tour, in the company of Edouard Vuillard and Ker-Xavier Roussel, of Holland with its many museums. Bonnard treated the nude extensively in his series of lithographs for the Longus poem Daphnis et Chloé, which Ambroise Vollard published in 1902.

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