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Lot Essay
The present work is closely related to a painting of the same title (fig. 1), usually dated between 1867 and 1877, with the substantial difference between the two being the inclusion of a cat at the lower right in the watercolour. The complex compositional arrangement of the present work, with its crowded interior setting and suggestive narrative, is related moreover to two further paintings, namely the versions of A Modern Olympia (Private collection and Musée d'Orsay, Paris; R.171 & 225), of which the Paris picture is dateable to 1873, as well as another watercolour entitled Le Punch au rhum (RWC.34). The dramatis personae of the present picture also strongly recall the scandalous cast of Manet's Olympia, the work which embodied perhaps more than any other the spirit of the Salon des Refusés of 1863 (fig. 2).
The present version of L'après-midi à Naples, and the series to which it belongs, demonstrated Cézanne's admiration for the masters of the seventeenth-century, and for Rubens in particular. From the heavy swag of drapery held aside at the left edge to the robustly drawn, interlocking figures resting within a highly-wrought composition, Cézanne's quotations from the Baroque vocabulary are manifold and deftly manifest.
The present version of L'après-midi à Naples, and the series to which it belongs, demonstrated Cézanne's admiration for the masters of the seventeenth-century, and for Rubens in particular. From the heavy swag of drapery held aside at the left edge to the robustly drawn, interlocking figures resting within a highly-wrought composition, Cézanne's quotations from the Baroque vocabulary are manifold and deftly manifest.