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HENRI LEBASQUE (1865-1937) Nude with fruit bowl, circa 1925-…
See original version (French)
72
-
HENRI LEBASQUE (1865-1937) Nude with fruit bowl, circa 1925-…
See original version (French)
Estimate €40,000 - €60,000
Voluntary lot
Description
HENRI LEBASQUE (1865-1937)
Nude with fruit bowl, circa 1925-1926
Oil on canvas
Signed lower right
46 x 55 cm - 18 1/8 x 21 5/8 in.
A copy of a certificate from Monsieur Philippe Cézanne, dated 5 March 1985, will be given to the buyer.
Oil on canvas, signed lower right
Provenance :
Private collection, France (acquired in 1985 by the current owner's father, then by descent)
Related work(s) :
Henri Lebasque (1865-1937), Nude with Fruit Cup, oil on canvas, signed lower left, 65 x 100 cm, in. Impressionist & Nineteenth Century Art, Christie's, New York, 13 May 1999, lot 176
Henri Lebasque (1865-1937), Nature morte aux grenades, oil on canvas, signed lower left, 42 x 55 cm, in. Sale, Tableaux modernes & arts décoratifs du XXe siècle, Audap & associés, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 26 June 2025, lot 11
Notes:
"The way of painting of a sensitive artist like Lebasque changes according to the conditions of the atmosphere in which he finds himself. Quick and jolting to convey the violent blows of daylight outside, it calms down and wraps itself up inside. We will still find here the generous paste flows of his last style, that of Sainte-Maxime and Les Andelys, for example; but he applied himself to making the light glide more gently over these fresh complexions, over these new flowers spread out before him, whose velvety, pearly aspect and milky blondes enchanted him and renewed his palette. Robust at times and sincere always, he knows how to make a vivid stain burst forth, how to make pure tones sing, just as he knows how to model true forms, without mawkishness or dullness.
You can feel the air circulating around his models in the luminous interiors of the Mediterranean coast, the light penetrating through closed shutters or windows wide open onto powerful greenery or harmonious horizons; You can also feel the truth of the forms, which remain individual, sometimes blooming in a blond, plump nature that Rubens would have loved, sometimes finer and more nervous, as in this large figure reclining on a leopard skin, which is one of the last and most important pieces in the series, or in this other crouched figure, her head on her knees, in an unexpected arabesque, in front of a pink sofa. Here again is the same young woman getting out of the bath, draped in her orange bathrobe with black designs, which opens complacently, while another female silhouette walks away through an open door next door, dressed in a light blue dress that highlights her blond complexion. This must be the same woman who, earlier, was lying more limply on the sofa, half undressed, or who, completely naked, was resting with her arms crossed above her head, under the caress of the light rays penetrating through the open window, or who, climbing on her knees on the armchair, looking through the window at the distant hills, was offering the abundant spectacle of a generous rump towards the interior.
With this very free and luminous series, we are as far as possible from the academic nudity frozen by the memory of the Greco-Roman model or by the dry, linear and soulless study of the studio model. Lebasque's sensibility blossoms in complete freedom here; his joy in painting the resplendent light of nature can be found here; he was not touched by the bitterness and the sort of disenchantment that emanate from too many contemporary nude paintings, where the artist, by dint of pursuing an implacable truth in form and colour, lapses into a base and trivial materialism. One thinks, in front of his blossoming nudes, of the dazzling carnal poems of a Rubens, whose power he no doubt falls short of, but whose planty, monotonous exaggeration he avoids; one also thinks of the delicate visions of our French painters of the eighteenth century, who singularly loved these pearly freshnesses, but often lapsed, Boucher especially, into the formulas of a kind of gallant academicism. It is true and simple nature that is displayed here without reserve, but without shamelessness, without sauciness or innuendo; and it is the mastery of a born colourist who asserts himself in complete freedom, without system or formula, with a concern for harmonies and particularly delicious singing chords".
Paul Vitry, Henri Lebasque, Paris: Georges Petit et Henri Floury, 1928, pp. 174-184
Additional information:
This work is part of a series of nudes, painted around 1925-1926, featuring Alice Prin (1901-1953), known as "Kiki" or "Kiki de Montparnasse". Denise Bazetoux said that these nudes "have nothing to do with studio models". To achieve this result, she says that the painter "observes his models moving freely in front of him, then chooses the attitude or movement that pleases him in order to produce one or more sketches, and finally the finished painting. [...] The blonde Marinette, a model he shared with Bonnard, his neighbour in Cannet, and Kiki, the brunette, were thus depicted many times, moving or resting in sunlit interiors, on a terrace with an open window, behind closed shutters, on the beach...".
See original version (French)
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