Lot Essay
This work is recorded in the Vollard archives, photo no. 339 (annotated by Czanne's son: vers 1880)
The presence of a nude figure on the bank of a stream clearly links Bethsabe to his treatment of the subject of bathers that would be at the center of his oeuvre for the next thirty years. The revolutionary treatment of this subject altered the traditional concept of representing the human figure by adapting it according to the picture's structure and color planes. As such, this series proved crucial to the development of twentieth century art.
In the subject of Bathsheba at her bath, Czanne discovered a poignant biblical narrative that echoed themes he would also explore in his early fantasy and later bathers paintings. A rich visual tradition surrounded the Old Testament heroine in earlier art, and, as his Bethsabe (Rewald no. 592) of circa 1885-1890 establishes, it is clearly one that Czanne knew. The central theme of the familiar subject was the seductive beauty of the nude Bathsheba secretly observed by the biblical King David as she bathed. The king would send for the married woman "and he lay with her, for she was purified from her uncleanness; and she returned unto her house" (2 Samuel, 11:2-4). The erotic undertone of the moment Czanne chooses to paint underlies the sexual tension that consistently appears in his treatment of the nude.
Like the subject of the biblical nude Susanna spied upon by the Elders, or that of the mythological heroine Diana discovered at the bath by the unfortunate Actaeon, the story of Bathsheba had long provided a narrative pretext for an image of an irresistable nude in a landscape. The strains of voyeurism and of lustful, forbidden desire that attended such images, however, were usually more pronounced in depictions of Bathsheba. More than any other historical nude heroine, her beauty was incontestable: it had provoked none other than David, a paragon of Old Testament piety and virtue, to submit to his baser instincts. Thus, the story of Bathsheba also offered a vivid visual premise in which moral and erotic concerns were closely entwined, and in which the centrality of looking and the seduction of the beholder--both David and the viewer--were key.
Though it had been common in painting since the medieval period and became especially popular in German and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the currency of the Bathsheba theme in Czanne's day was no doubt augmented by the arrival at the Louvre in 1869 of Rembrandt's canonical image of Bathsheba Reading King David's Letter of 1654 (fig.1), part of the momentous Le Caze bequest. As Gary Schwartz has recently shown, the painting had earlier suffered from a low opinion and critical neglect, but was greeted in Paris with new and open adulation. Years later, the painter and collector Lon Bonnat (1833-1923) memorably recalled his first view:
Never will I forget this impression. My old teacher Robert-Fleury came straight to it, and we said to ourselves: "This is the most beautiful painting in the Louvre." It may have been an exaggeration of the moment, but it cannot be denied that no painting of a nude can compare with this female body in power of execution.
Czanne may also have been among those who clamored for a glimpse of Rembrandt's nude shortly after it went on view. A small copy of the Louvre's Bethsabe (Rewald no. 173), discovered in a house near Aix that belonged to an acquaintance of Czanne's and that at one time displayed the painter's name on the back of the stretcher, was attributed by Rewald to the artist and dated to circa 1870. Using short, squared strokes and thick pigments, Czanne seems to have followed the original image quite closely. But when he returned to the theme of Bathsheba in a small series of later paintings, watercolors and drawings, he exploited its broader visual and thematic implications.
Of the three related later canvases (Rewald nos. 591 and 593), the present work most closely recalls the artistic conventions of the biblical narrative, recently studied by Eric Jan Sluijter. In front of a luxuriously leafy tree, Czanne's elegant seated nude here poses at center, turning just enough into the sunlight to expose her full nudity to the viewer as her maidservant kneels to wash her feet. Her legs are daintly crossed, a motif that recalls (though in reverse) the Louvre Bathsheba, but was also employed by many artists, including Rembrandt himself in an earlier version in which she, like Czanne's nude, faces to the right. As Leo Steinberg has recently suggested, the gesture may add a note of modesty to the famously alluring nude. Just beyond the two figures in Czanne's painting, a glimpse of a classical colonnade--referring to David's palace--again places us within the biblical setting. This too was a standard pictorial element in Bathsheba images: both the lost Rembrandt now known from copies and a version of the Toilet of Bathsheba of 1643 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), now attributed to a Rembrandt pupil, for example, include such architectural references to the balcony from where David espied her beauty.
Finally, although it is difficult to read with certainty the sketchy center of Czanne's canvas, his Bathsheba appears to be holding the proverbial letter in which, according to popular and artistic traditions (rather than the biblical account), David made his illicit request. Unlike Rembrandt's wistful nude, however, who is lost in melancholic thought as she ponders the difficult choice the letter holds, Czanne's figure is actively reading its contents. And, in fact, the association of the biblical heroine with a letter was so strong that Dutch genre paintings of contemporary young women reading letters often carried subtle connotations of the Bathsheba theme.
Yet Czanne's grasp of the allusive biblical subject in all of its rich complexity is evident in each of his paintings of Bathsheba, none of which fall into the realm of genre. While in his other two late versions few of the narrative props remain, we are nonetheless treated within them to an imaginative vision of a female nude whose radiant and irresistible beauty is echoed in the curvaceous landscape behind. It closely resembles the terrain of his native Aix, a vision that he himself would never escape in his art.
As with many of Cezanne's fantastic images, the dating on his Bethsabe has varied widely. Czanne's son (see note above) suggested a date of 1880; Venturi, revising an earlier proposed date of circa 1875-1876, placed it as early as circa 1872-1874, and more recently, Krumrine also dated it circa 1875-1877. Rewald has placed it significantly later in the painter's career, possibly based on stylistic grounds.
(fig. 1) Rembrandt, Bathsheba Reading King David's Letter, 1654.
Muse du Louvre, Paris.
(no fig.) Pellerin's study showing Bethsabe hanging on the left.
The presence of a nude figure on the bank of a stream clearly links Bethsabe to his treatment of the subject of bathers that would be at the center of his oeuvre for the next thirty years. The revolutionary treatment of this subject altered the traditional concept of representing the human figure by adapting it according to the picture's structure and color planes. As such, this series proved crucial to the development of twentieth century art.
In the subject of Bathsheba at her bath, Czanne discovered a poignant biblical narrative that echoed themes he would also explore in his early fantasy and later bathers paintings. A rich visual tradition surrounded the Old Testament heroine in earlier art, and, as his Bethsabe (Rewald no. 592) of circa 1885-1890 establishes, it is clearly one that Czanne knew. The central theme of the familiar subject was the seductive beauty of the nude Bathsheba secretly observed by the biblical King David as she bathed. The king would send for the married woman "and he lay with her, for she was purified from her uncleanness; and she returned unto her house" (2 Samuel, 11:2-4). The erotic undertone of the moment Czanne chooses to paint underlies the sexual tension that consistently appears in his treatment of the nude.
Like the subject of the biblical nude Susanna spied upon by the Elders, or that of the mythological heroine Diana discovered at the bath by the unfortunate Actaeon, the story of Bathsheba had long provided a narrative pretext for an image of an irresistable nude in a landscape. The strains of voyeurism and of lustful, forbidden desire that attended such images, however, were usually more pronounced in depictions of Bathsheba. More than any other historical nude heroine, her beauty was incontestable: it had provoked none other than David, a paragon of Old Testament piety and virtue, to submit to his baser instincts. Thus, the story of Bathsheba also offered a vivid visual premise in which moral and erotic concerns were closely entwined, and in which the centrality of looking and the seduction of the beholder--both David and the viewer--were key.
Though it had been common in painting since the medieval period and became especially popular in German and Dutch art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the currency of the Bathsheba theme in Czanne's day was no doubt augmented by the arrival at the Louvre in 1869 of Rembrandt's canonical image of Bathsheba Reading King David's Letter of 1654 (fig.1), part of the momentous Le Caze bequest. As Gary Schwartz has recently shown, the painting had earlier suffered from a low opinion and critical neglect, but was greeted in Paris with new and open adulation. Years later, the painter and collector Lon Bonnat (1833-1923) memorably recalled his first view:
Never will I forget this impression. My old teacher Robert-Fleury came straight to it, and we said to ourselves: "This is the most beautiful painting in the Louvre." It may have been an exaggeration of the moment, but it cannot be denied that no painting of a nude can compare with this female body in power of execution.
Czanne may also have been among those who clamored for a glimpse of Rembrandt's nude shortly after it went on view. A small copy of the Louvre's Bethsabe (Rewald no. 173), discovered in a house near Aix that belonged to an acquaintance of Czanne's and that at one time displayed the painter's name on the back of the stretcher, was attributed by Rewald to the artist and dated to circa 1870. Using short, squared strokes and thick pigments, Czanne seems to have followed the original image quite closely. But when he returned to the theme of Bathsheba in a small series of later paintings, watercolors and drawings, he exploited its broader visual and thematic implications.
Of the three related later canvases (Rewald nos. 591 and 593), the present work most closely recalls the artistic conventions of the biblical narrative, recently studied by Eric Jan Sluijter. In front of a luxuriously leafy tree, Czanne's elegant seated nude here poses at center, turning just enough into the sunlight to expose her full nudity to the viewer as her maidservant kneels to wash her feet. Her legs are daintly crossed, a motif that recalls (though in reverse) the Louvre Bathsheba, but was also employed by many artists, including Rembrandt himself in an earlier version in which she, like Czanne's nude, faces to the right. As Leo Steinberg has recently suggested, the gesture may add a note of modesty to the famously alluring nude. Just beyond the two figures in Czanne's painting, a glimpse of a classical colonnade--referring to David's palace--again places us within the biblical setting. This too was a standard pictorial element in Bathsheba images: both the lost Rembrandt now known from copies and a version of the Toilet of Bathsheba of 1643 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), now attributed to a Rembrandt pupil, for example, include such architectural references to the balcony from where David espied her beauty.
Finally, although it is difficult to read with certainty the sketchy center of Czanne's canvas, his Bathsheba appears to be holding the proverbial letter in which, according to popular and artistic traditions (rather than the biblical account), David made his illicit request. Unlike Rembrandt's wistful nude, however, who is lost in melancholic thought as she ponders the difficult choice the letter holds, Czanne's figure is actively reading its contents. And, in fact, the association of the biblical heroine with a letter was so strong that Dutch genre paintings of contemporary young women reading letters often carried subtle connotations of the Bathsheba theme.
Yet Czanne's grasp of the allusive biblical subject in all of its rich complexity is evident in each of his paintings of Bathsheba, none of which fall into the realm of genre. While in his other two late versions few of the narrative props remain, we are nonetheless treated within them to an imaginative vision of a female nude whose radiant and irresistible beauty is echoed in the curvaceous landscape behind. It closely resembles the terrain of his native Aix, a vision that he himself would never escape in his art.
As with many of Cezanne's fantastic images, the dating on his Bethsabe has varied widely. Czanne's son (see note above) suggested a date of 1880; Venturi, revising an earlier proposed date of circa 1875-1876, placed it as early as circa 1872-1874, and more recently, Krumrine also dated it circa 1875-1877. Rewald has placed it significantly later in the painter's career, possibly based on stylistic grounds.
(fig. 1) Rembrandt, Bathsheba Reading King David's Letter, 1654.
Muse du Louvre, Paris.
(no fig.) Pellerin's study showing Bethsabe hanging on the left.