Lot Essay
This work is recorded in the Vollard archives, photo no. 483 (annotated by Czanne's son: 1875)
With only a few exceptions, this canvas of a reclining nude figure in an interior, dated consistently to the mid-1870s, has escaped critical attention. In his 1923 monograph on the painter, the French critic, Georges Rivire, entitled the work Maria with little in the way of an explanation. More recently, though Mary Louise Krumrine grouped it with a series of works related to Czanne's seminal painting of L'Eternal feminin (Rewald no. 300) of circa 1877, Krumrine did not discuss the work in specific terms. And in fact, the painting's size, sketch-like rendering and rather unusual depiction of a recumbent female figure in this specific, provocative pose renders it an atypical painting in the varied corpus of works by Czanne devoted to fantastic nudes. However, in his recent catalogue raisonn, Rewald briefly mentions an obscure drawing, unknown to Chappuis but found on the back of a portrait drawing of Madame Czanne (Chappuis no. 718), and presumably discovered when the work came up for auction (Sotheby's, London, 2 April 1974, lot 10 recto). It must be identified as a study for his later painting, and allows us to discuss Czanne's intended subject.
In fact, Krumrine is correct in aligning Czanne's Femme nue couche with his L'Eternal feminin. The present work echoes its high-keyed palette (as well as that of the related watercolor Rewald Watercolors no. 57; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles) of grayish blues, ochres, and greens, and likewise depends upon brilliant red accents, here provided by the vivid tones of the coverlet on which Czanne's nude rests. And we are confronted once more with the subject of a woman as an object of male adulation. Yet now, instead of the motley throng of admirers who populate the Getty painting, we see in the preparatory drawing a single male figure who looks out from his fortuitous perch. He may well be an artist, and the original work a reprise of the artist and model theme Czanne had sometimes treated in the past. An earlier watercolor, Le peintre et la femme (Rewald Watercolors no. 33; fig. 1) of circa 1867-1870, features a similarly provocative nude, though she is posed in reverse. Alternatively, the nude may have represented a variation on the theme of the courtesan, to which the artist had turned in numerous revisions of Manet's famed painting of Olympia. Femme nue couche attests above all to the compelling attraction and inner conflicts the subject of the nude continued to hold for Czanne in the 1870s, even as he excercised his new powers as a painter of Impressionist landscapes.
(fig. 1) Paul Czanne, Le peintre et la femme, 1867-1870.
Location unknown.
With only a few exceptions, this canvas of a reclining nude figure in an interior, dated consistently to the mid-1870s, has escaped critical attention. In his 1923 monograph on the painter, the French critic, Georges Rivire, entitled the work Maria with little in the way of an explanation. More recently, though Mary Louise Krumrine grouped it with a series of works related to Czanne's seminal painting of L'Eternal feminin (Rewald no. 300) of circa 1877, Krumrine did not discuss the work in specific terms. And in fact, the painting's size, sketch-like rendering and rather unusual depiction of a recumbent female figure in this specific, provocative pose renders it an atypical painting in the varied corpus of works by Czanne devoted to fantastic nudes. However, in his recent catalogue raisonn, Rewald briefly mentions an obscure drawing, unknown to Chappuis but found on the back of a portrait drawing of Madame Czanne (Chappuis no. 718), and presumably discovered when the work came up for auction (Sotheby's, London, 2 April 1974, lot 10 recto). It must be identified as a study for his later painting, and allows us to discuss Czanne's intended subject.
In fact, Krumrine is correct in aligning Czanne's Femme nue couche with his L'Eternal feminin. The present work echoes its high-keyed palette (as well as that of the related watercolor Rewald Watercolors no. 57; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles) of grayish blues, ochres, and greens, and likewise depends upon brilliant red accents, here provided by the vivid tones of the coverlet on which Czanne's nude rests. And we are confronted once more with the subject of a woman as an object of male adulation. Yet now, instead of the motley throng of admirers who populate the Getty painting, we see in the preparatory drawing a single male figure who looks out from his fortuitous perch. He may well be an artist, and the original work a reprise of the artist and model theme Czanne had sometimes treated in the past. An earlier watercolor, Le peintre et la femme (Rewald Watercolors no. 33; fig. 1) of circa 1867-1870, features a similarly provocative nude, though she is posed in reverse. Alternatively, the nude may have represented a variation on the theme of the courtesan, to which the artist had turned in numerous revisions of Manet's famed painting of Olympia. Femme nue couche attests above all to the compelling attraction and inner conflicts the subject of the nude continued to hold for Czanne in the 1870s, even as he excercised his new powers as a painter of Impressionist landscapes.
(fig. 1) Paul Czanne, Le peintre et la femme, 1867-1870.
Location unknown.