Femme nue couchée
Painting by Gustave Courbet
Femme nue couchée () is an 1862 painting by French Realist painter Gustave Courbet (1819–1877). It depicts a young dark-haired woman reclining on a couch, wearing only a pair of shoes and stockings. Behind her, partly drawn red curtains reveal an overcast sky seen through a closed window. The work is likely influenced by Goya's "La maja desnuda".
The painting was initially owned by Alexandre Berthier and later by Marcell Nemes. In 1913, it was bought by the Hungarian collector Ferenc Hatvany. At one time, he painted a copy of the painting and, as a practical joke, sent it to be exhibited as the original at a Belgrade exhibition of French painting in 1939. Together with the rest of Hatvany's collection, the painting was looted from a Budapest bank vault during the 1945 Soviet conquest of the city in World War II. After it was briefly seen attached to the tarpaulin of a Soviet military vehicle on Buda Castle Hill, the painting appeared to have vanished without a trace.
It surfaced again in 2000 and 2003, when it was offered for sale first to the Museum of Fine Arts and then to the Commission for Art Recovery (CAR) by a Slovak man claiming to be an antiques dealer, but who appeared to his interlocutors to be involved with the Slovak organised crime scene. The dealer produced an affidavit, judged reliable by the CAR, stating that the painting was given by Soviet soldiers to a doctor from a village near Bratislava in return for his medical treatment of a wounded soldier. An inspection of the picture's craquelure determined that the painting was indeed the original and not Hatvany's copy.
After five years of negotiations, Interpol involvement and diplomatic wrangling between the US and Slovakian government, the CAR managed to acquire the painting for Hatvany's heirs in exchange for a US$300,000 reward. It was shown to the public for the first time since the 1930s in a 2007 Courbet exposition at the Grand Palais in Paris. The painting was sold at auction on 9 November 2015 for 15.3 million U.S. dollars, four times the previous auction record for a Courbet painting.
Footnotes.
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Gustave Courbet
French realist painter (1819–1877)
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet ( ; ; ; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and the Romanticism of the previous generation of visual artists. His independence set an example that was important to later artists, such as the Impressionists and the Cubists. Courbet occupies an important place in 19th-century French painting as an innovator and as an artist willing to make bold social statements through his work.
Courbet's paintings of the late 1840s and early 1850s brought him his first recognition. They challenged convention by depicting unidealized peasants and workers, often on a grand scale traditionally reserved for paintings of religious or historical subjects. Courbet's subsequent paintings were mostly of a less overtly political character: landscapes, seascapes, hunting scenes, nudes, and still lifes. Courbet was imprisoned for six months in 1871 for his involvement with the Paris Commune and lived in exile in Switzerland from 1873 until his death four years later.
Biography.
Gustave Courbet was born in 1819 to Régis and Sylvie Oudot Courbet in Ornans (department of Doubs). Anti-monarchical feelings prevailed in the household. (His maternal grandfather fought in the French Revolution.) Courbet's sisters, Zoé, Zélie, and Juliette were his first models for drawing and painting. After moving to Paris he often returned home to Ornans to hunt, fish, and find inspiration.
Courbet went to Paris in 1839 and worked at the studio of Steuben and Hesse. An independent spirit, he soon left, preferring to develop his own style by studying the paintings of Spanish, Flemish and French masters in the Louvre, and painting copies of their work.
Courbet's first works were an "Odalisque" inspired by the writing of Victor Hugo and a "Lélia" illustrating George Sand, but he soon abandoned literary influences, choosing instead to base his paintings on observed reality. Among his paintings of the early 1840s are several self-portraits, Romantic in conception, in which the artist portrayed himself in various roles. These include "Self-Portrait with Black Dog" (c. 1842–44, accepted for exhibition at the 1844 Paris Salon), the theatrical "Self-Portrait" which is also known as "Desperate Man" (c. 1843–45), "Lovers in the Countryside" (1844, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon), "The Sculptor" (1845), "The Wounded Man" (1844–54, Musée d'Orsay, Paris), "The Cellist, Self-Portrait" (1847, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, shown at the 1848 Salon), and "Man with a Pipe" (1848–49, Musée Fabre, Montpellier).
Trips to the Netherlands and Belgium in 1846–47 strengthened Courbet's belief that painters should portray the life around them, as Rembrandt, Hals and other Dutch masters had. By 1848, he had gained supporters among the younger critics, the Neo-romantics and Realists, notably Champfleury.
Courbet achieved his first Salon success in 1849 with his painting "After Dinner at Ornans". The work, reminiscent of Chardin and Le Nain, earned Courbet a gold medal and was purchased by the state. The gold medal meant that his works would no longer require jury approval for exhibition at the Salon—an exemption Courbet enjoyed until 1857 (when the rule changed).
In 1849–50, Courbet painted "The Stone Breakers" (destroyed in the Allied Bombing of Dresden in 1945), which Proudhon admired as an icon of peasant life; it has been called "the first of his great works". The painting was inspired by a scene Courbet witnessed on the roadside. He later explained to Champfleury and the writer Francis Wey: "It is not often that one encounters so complete an expression of poverty and so, right then and there I got the idea for a painting. I told them to come to my studio the next morning."
Realism.
Courbet's work belonged neither to the predominant Romantic nor Neoclassical schools. History painting, which the Paris Salon esteemed as a painter's highest calling, did not interest him, for he believed that "the artists of one century [are] basically incapable of reproducing the aspect of a past or future century ..." Instead, he maintained that the only possible source for living art is the artist's own experience. He and Jean-François Millet would find inspiration painting the life of peasants and workers.
Courbet painted figurative compositions, landscapes, seascapes, and still lifes. He courted controversy by addressing social issues in his work, and by painting subjects that were considered vulgar, such as the rural bourgeoisie, peasants, and working conditions of the poor. His work, along with that of Honoré Daumier and Jean-François Millet, became known as "Realism". For Courbet realism dealt not with the perfection of line and form, but entailed spontaneous and rough handling of paint, suggesting direct observation by the artist while portraying the irregularities in nature. He depicted the harshness of life, and in doing so challenged contemporary academic ideas of art. One of the distinctive features of Courbet's Realism was his lifelong attachment to his native province, the Franche-Comté, and of his birthplace, Ornans.
"The Stone Breakers".
Considered to be the first of Courbet's great works, "The Stone Breakers" of 1849 is an example of social realism that caused a sensation when it was first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1850. The work was based on two men, one young and one old, whom Courbet discovered engaged in backbreaking labor on the side of the road when he returned to Ornans for an eight-month visit in October 1848. On his inspiration, Courbet told his friends and art critics Francis Wey and Jules Champfleury, "It is not often that one encounters so complete an expression of poverty and so, right then and there I got the idea for a painting."
While other artists had depicted the plight of the rural poor, Courbet's peasants are not idealized like those in works such as Breton's 1854 painting, "The Gleaners".
During World War II, from 13 to 15 February 1945, the Allies continuously bombed the city of Dresden, Germany. German troops hastily loaded artworks from Dresden's galleries and museums onto trucks. "The Stone Breakers" was destroyed, along with 153 other paintings, when a transport vehicle moving the pictures to the Königstein Fortress, near Dresden, was bombed by Allied forces.
"A Burial at Ornans".
The Salon of 1850–1851 found him triumphant with "The Stone Breakers", the "Peasants of Flagey" and "A Burial at Ornans". The "Burial", one of Courbet's most important works, records the funeral of his grand uncle which he attended in September 1848. People who attended the funeral were the models for the painting. Previously, models had been used as actors in historical narratives, but in "Burial" Courbet said he "painted the very people who had been present at the interment, all the townspeople". The result is a realistic presentation of them and life in Ornans.
The vast painting, measuring , drew both praise and fierce denunciations from critics and the public, in part because it upset convention by depicting a prosaic ritual on a scale which would previously have been reserved for a religious or royal subject.
According to art historian Sarah Faunce, "In Paris, the "Burial" was judged as a work that had thrust itself into the grand tradition of history painting, like an upstart in dirty boots crashing a genteel party, and in terms of that tradition it was, of course, found wanting." The painting lacks the sentimental rhetoric that was expected in a genre work: Courbet's mourners make no theatrical gestures of grief, and their faces seemed more caricatured than ennobled. The critics accused Courbet of a deliberate pursuit of ugliness.
Eventually, the public grew more interested in the new Realist approach, and the lavish, decadent fantasy of Romanticism lost popularity. Courbet well understood the importance of the painting, and said of it, ""Burial at Ornans" was in reality the burial of romanticism."
Courbet became a celebrity and was spoken of as a genius, a "terrible socialist" and a "savage". He actively encouraged the public's perception of him as an unschooled peasant, while his ambition, his bold pronouncements to journalists, and his insistence on depicting his own life in his art gave him a reputation for unbridled vanity.
Courbet associated his ideas of realism in art with political anarchism, and, having gained an audience, he promoted political ideas by writing politically motivated essays and dissertations. His familiar visage was the object of frequent caricature in the popular French press.
In 1850, Courbet wrote to a friend:
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During the 1850s, Courbet painted numerous figurative works using common folk and friends as his subjects, such as "Village Damsels" (1852), "The Wrestlers" (1853), "The Bathers" (1853), "The Sleeping Spinner" (1853), and "The Wheat Sifters" (1854).
"The Artist's Studio".
In 1855, Courbet submitted fourteen paintings for exhibition at the "Exposition Universelle". Three were rejected for lack of space, including "A Burial at Ornans" and his other monumental canvas "The Artist's Studio". Refusing to be denied, Courbet took matters into his own hands. He displayed forty of his paintings, including "The Artist's Studio", in his gallery called "The Pavilion of Realism" (Pavillon du Réalisme) which was a temporary structure that he erected next door to the official Salon-like "Exposition Universelle".
The work is an allegory of Courbet's life as a painter, seen as a heroic venture, in which he is flanked by friends and admirers on the right, and challenges and opposition to the left. Friends on the right include the art critics Champfleury, and Charles Baudelaire, and art collector Alfred Bruyas. On the left are figures (priest, prostitute, grave digger, merchant, and others) who represent what Courbet described in a letter to Champfleury as "the other world of trivial life, the people, misery, poverty, wealth, the exploited and the exploiters, the people who live off death."
In the foreground of the left-hand side is a man with dogs, who was not mentioned in Courbet's letter to Champfleury. X-rays show he was painted later, but his role in the painting is important: he is an allegory of the then-current French Emperor, Napoleon III, identified by his famous hunting dogs and iconic twirled mustache. By placing him on the left, Courbet publicly shows his disdain for the emperor and depicts him as a criminal, suggesting that his "ownership" of France is an illegal one.
Although artists like Eugène Delacroix were ardent champions of his effort, the public went to the show mostly out of curiosity and to deride him. Attendance and sales were disappointing, but Courbet's status as a hero to the French avant-garde became assured. He was admired by the American James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and he became an inspiration to the younger generation of French artists including Édouard Manet and the Impressionist painters. "The Artist's Studio" was recognized as a masterpiece by Delacroix, Baudelaire, and Champfleury, if not by the public.
Seascapes.
While Courbet's seascapes, painted during his many visits to the northern coast of France in the late 1860s, were decidedly less controversial than his salon submissions, they furthered his contributions (willing or otherwise) to realism with their emphasis on both the beauty and danger of the natural world. There is a distinct range in the tones of this period with "The Calm Sea" (1869) depicting the serenity of the receded tide, and "The Sailboat" (c. 1869) showing a sailboat wrestling with violent tides.
Realist manifesto.
Courbet wrote a Realist manifesto for the introduction to the catalogue of this independent, personal exhibition, echoing the tone of the period's political manifestos. In it, he asserts his goal as an artist is "to translate the customs, the ideas, the appearance of my epoch according to my own estimation."
<templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />The title of Realist was thrust upon me just as the title of Romantic was imposed upon the men of 1830. Titles have never given a true idea of things: if it were otherwise, the works would be unnecessary.
Without expanding on the greater or lesser accuracy of a name that nobody, I should hope, can really be expected to understand, I will limit myself to a few words of elucidation in order to cut short the misunderstandings.
I have studied the art of the ancients and the art of the moderns, avoiding any preconceived system and without prejudice. I no longer wanted to imitate the one than to copy the other; nor, furthermore, was it my intention to attain the trivial goal of "art for art's sake". No! I simply wanted to draw forth, from a complete acquaintance with tradition, the reasoned and independent consciousness of my own individuality.
To know in order to do, that was my idea. To be in a position to translate the customs, the ideas, the appearance of my time, according to my own estimation; to be not only a painter but a man as well; in short, to create living art – this is my goal. (Gustave Courbet, 1855)
Notoriety.
In the Salon of 1857, Courbet showed six paintings. These included "Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine (Summer)", depicting two prostitutes under a tree, as well as the first of many hunting scenes Courbet was to paint during the remainder of his life: "Hind at Bay in the Snow" and "The Quarry".
"Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine", painted in 1856, provoked a scandal. Art critics accustomed to conventional, "timeless" nude women in landscapes were shocked by Courbet's depiction of modern women casually displaying their undergarments.
By exhibiting sensational works alongside hunting scenes, of the sort that had brought popular success to the English painter Edwin Landseer, Courbet guaranteed himself "both notoriety and sales".
During the 1860s, Courbet painted a series of increasingly erotic works such as "Femme nue couchée", culminating in "The Origin of the World (L'Origine du monde)" (1866), which depicts female genitalia and was not publicly exhibited until 1988, and "Sleep" (1866), featuring two women in bed. The latter painting became the subject of a police report when it was exhibited by a picture dealer in 1872.
Until about 1861, Napoléon's regime had exhibited authoritarian characteristics, using press censorship to prevent the spread of opposition, manipulating elections, and depriving Parliament of the right to free debate or any real power. In the 1860s, however, Napoléon III made more concessions to placate his liberal opponents. This change began by allowing free debates in Parliament and public reports of parliamentary debates. Press censorship, too, was relaxed and culminated in the appointment of the Liberal Émile Ollivier, previously a leader of the opposition to Napoléon's regime, as the "de facto" Prime Minister in 1870. As a sign of appeasement to the Liberals who admired Courbet, Napoleon III nominated him to the Legion of Honour in 1870. His refusal of the cross of the Legion of Honour angered those in power but made him immensely popular with those who opposed the prevailing regime.
Courbet and the Paris Commune.
On 4 September 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, Courbet made a proposal that later came back to haunt him. He wrote a letter to the Government of National Defense, proposing that the column in the Place Vendôme, erected by Napoleon I to honour the victories of the French Army, be taken down. He wrote:
<templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />In as much as the Vendôme Column is a monument devoid of all artistic value, tending to perpetuate by its expression the ideas of war and conquest of the past imperial dynasty, which are reproved by a republican nation's sentiment, citizen Courbet expresses the wish that the National Defense government will authorize him to disassemble this column." Courbet proposed that the Column be moved to a more appropriate place, such as the Hotel des Invalides, a military hospital. He also wrote an open letter addressed to the German Army and to German artists, proposing that German and French cannons should be melted down and crowned with a liberty cap, and made into a new monument on Place Vendôme, dedicated to the federation of the German and French people. The Government of National Defense did nothing about his suggestion to tear down the column, but it was not forgotten.
On 18 March, in the aftermath of the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, a revolutionary government called the Paris Commune briefly took power in the city. Courbet played an active part and organized a Federation of Artists, which held its first meeting on 5 April in the Grand Amphitheater of the School of Medicine. Some three hundred to four hundred painters, sculptors, architects, and decorators attended. There were some famous names on the list of members, including André Gill, Honoré Daumier, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Eugène Pottier, Jules Dalou, and Édouard Manet. Manet was not in Paris during the Commune and did not attend, and Corot, who was seventy-five years old, stayed in a country house and his studio during the Commune, not taking part in the political events.
Courbet chaired the meeting and proposed that the Louvre and the Musée du Luxembourg, the two major art museums of Paris, closed during the uprising, be reopened as soon as possible and that the traditional annual exhibit called the Salon be held as in years past, but with radical differences. He proposed that the Salon should be free of any government interference or rewards to preferred artists; no medals or government commissions would be given. Furthermore, he called for the abolition of the most famous state institutions of French art; the École des Beaux-Arts, the French Academy in Rome, the French School at Athens, and the Fine Arts section of the Institute of France.
On 12 April, the Executive Committee of the Commune gave Courbet, though he was not yet officially a member of the Commune, the assignment of opening the museums and organizing the Salon. They issued the following decree at the same meeting: "The Column of the Place Vendôme will be demolished." On 16 April, special elections were held to replace more moderate members of the Commune who had resigned their seats, and Courbet was elected as a delegate for the 6th arrondissement of Paris. He was given the title of Delegate of Fine Arts, and on 21 April he was also made a member of the Commission on Education. At the meeting of the Commission on 27 April, the minutes reported that Courbet requested the demolition of the Vendôme column be carried out and that the column would be replaced by an allegorical figure representing the taking of power of the Commune on 18 March.
Nonetheless, Courbet was a dissident by nature, and he was soon in opposition with the majority of the Commune members on some of its measures. He was one of a minority of Commune Members who opposed the creation of a Committee on Public Safety, modeled on the committee of the same name which carried out the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution.
Courbet opposed the Commune on another more serious matter: the arrest of his friend Gustave Chaudey, a prominent socialist, magistrate, and journalist, whose portrait Courbet had painted. The popular Commune newspaper, "Le Père Duchesne", accused Chaudey, when he was briefly deputy mayor of the 9th arrondissement before the Commune was formed, of ordering soldiers to fire on a crowd that had surrounded the Hôtel de Ville. Courbet's opposition was of no use; on 23 May 1871, in the final days of the Commune, Chaudey was shot by a Commune firing squad. According to some sources Courbet resigned from the Commune in protest.
On 13 May, on the proposal of Courbet, the Paris house of Adolphe Thiers, the chief executive of the French government, was demolished, and his art collection confiscated. Courbet proposed that the confiscated art be given to the Louvre and other museums, but the director of the Louvre refused to accept it. On 16 May, just nine days before the fall of the Commune, in a large ceremony with military bands and photographers, the Vendôme column was pulled down and broke into pieces. Some witnesses said Courbet was there, others denied it. The following day, the Federation of Artists debated dismissing directors of the Louvre and of the Luxembourg museums, suspected by some in the Commune of having secret contacts with the French government, and appointed new heads of the museums.
According to one legend, Courbet defended the Louvre and other museums against "looting mobs", but there are no records of any such attacks on the museums. The only real threat to the Louvre came during "Bloody Week", 21–28 May 1871, when a unit of Communards, led by a Commune general, Jules Bergeret, set fire to the Tuileries Palace, next to the Louvre. The fire spread to the library of the Louvre, which was destroyed, but the efforts of museum curators and firemen saved the art gallery.
After the final suppression of the Commune by the French army on 28 May, Courbet went into hiding in the apartments of different friends. He was arrested on 7 June. At his trial before a military tribunal on 14 August, Courbet argued that he had only joined the Commune to pacify it and that he had wanted to move the Vendôme Column, not destroy it. He said he had only belonged to the Commune for a short period, and rarely attended its meetings. He was convicted, but given a lighter sentence than other Commune leaders: six months in prison and a fine of five hundred francs. Serving part of his sentence in the Sainte-Pélagie Prison in Paris, he was allowed an easel and paints, but he could not have models pose for him. He did a famous series of still-life paintings of flowers and fruit during his confinement.
Exile and death.
Courbet completed his prison sentence on 2 March 1872, but his problems caused by the destruction of the Vendôme Column were still not over. In 1873, the newly elected president of the Republic, Patrice de MacMahon, announced plans to rebuild the column, with the cost to be paid by Courbet. Unable to pay, Courbet went into a self-imposed exile in Switzerland to avoid bankruptcy. In the following years, he participated in Swiss regional and national exhibitions. Surveilled by the Swiss intelligence service, he enjoyed in the small Swiss art world the reputation as head of the "realist school" and inspired younger artists such as Auguste Baud-Bovy and Ferdinand Hodler.
Important works from this period include several paintings of trout, "hooked and bleeding from the gills", that have been interpreted as allegorical self-portraits of the exiled artist. In his final years, Courbet painted landscapes, including several scenes of water mysteriously emerging from the depths of the earth in the Jura Mountains of the France–Switzerland border. Courbet also worked on sculpture during his exile. Previously, in the early 1860s, he had produced a few sculptures, one of which – the "Fisherman of Chavots" (1862) – he donated to Ornans for a public fountain, but it was removed after Courbet's arrest.
In May 1877, the state set the final cost of reconstructing the Vendôme Column at 323,000 francs for Courbet to repay in annual installments of 10,000 francs for the next 33 years. On 31 December 1877, a day before the first installment was due, Courbet died, aged 58, in La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland, of a liver disease aggravated by heavy drinking.
Legacy.
Courbet was admired by many younger artists. Claude Monet included a portrait of Courbet in his own version of "Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe" from 1865–1866 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris). Courbet's particular kind of realism influenced many artists to follow, notably among them the German painters of the Leibl circle, James McNeill Whistler, and Paul Cézanne. Courbet's influence can also be seen in the work of Edward Hopper, whose "Bridge in Paris" (1906) and "Approaching a City" (1946) have been described as Freudian echoes of Courbet's "The Source of the Loue" and "The Origin of the World". His pupils included Henri Fantin-Latour, Hector Hanoteau and Olaf Isaachsen.
Courbet once wrote this in a letter:
<templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />I have always lived in freedom; let me end my life free; when I am dead let this be said of me: 'He belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any régime except the régime of liberty.'
Courbet and Cubism.
Two 19th-century artists prepared the way for the emergence of Cubism in the 20th century: Courbet and Cézanne. Cézanne's contributions are well-known. Courbet's importance was announced by Guillaume Apollinaire, poet-spokesperson for the Cubists. Writing in "Les Peintres Cubistes, Méditations Esthétiques" (1913) he declared, "Courbet is the father of the new painters." Jean Metzinger and Albert Gleizes often portrayed Courbet as the father of all modern art.
Both artists sought to transcend the conventional methods of rendering nature; Cézanne through a dialectical method revealing the process of seeing, Courbet by his materialism. The Cubists would combine these two approaches in developing a revolution in art.
On a formal level, Courbet wished to convey the physical characteristics of what he was painting: its density, weight, and texture. Art critic John Berger said: "No painter before Courbet was ever able to emphasize so uncompromisingly the density and weight of what he was painting." This emphasis on material reality endowed his subjects with dignity. Berger observed that the Cubist painters "were at great pains to establish the physical presence of what they were representing. And in this, they are the heirs of Courbet."
Nazi-looted art.
During the Third Reich (1933–1945) Jewish art collectors throughout Europe had their property seized as part of the Holocaust. Many artworks created by Courbet were looted by Nazis and their agents during this period and have only recently been reclaimed by the families of the previous owners.
Courbet's "La Falaise d'Etretat" was owned by the Jewish collector Marc Wolfson and his wife Erna, who both were murdered in Auschwitz. After disappearing during the Nazi occupation of France, it reappeared years later at the musée d'Orsay.
The great Hungarian Jewish collector Baron Mor Lipot Herzog owned several Courbet artworks, including "Le Chateau de Blonay (Neige)" (c. 1875, "The Chateau of Blonay (Snow)", now at the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts), and Courbet's most infamous work — ("The Origin of the World"). His was looted by Nazis and many are still missing.
Gustav Courbet's paintings "Village Girl With Goat", "The Father", and "Landscape With Rocks" were discovered in the Gurlitt Trove of art stashed in Munich. It is not known to whom they belonged.
Josephine Weinmann and her family, who were German Jews, had owned "Le Grand Pont" before they were forced to flee. The Nazi militant Herbert Schaefer acquired it and loaned it to the Yale University Art Gallery, against whom the Weinmanns filed a claim.
The French "Database of Art Objects at the Jeu de Paume (Cultural Plunder by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg)" has 41 entries for Courbet.
In March 2023, a museum at the University of Cambridge, in the United Kingdom, returned a painting "La Ronde Enfantine" by Gustave Courbet, which was stolen in 1941 by the Nazis in Paris. The canvas belonged to a Jewish member of the Resistance. The Spoliation Advisory Panel, a body created in 2000 by the British government, concluded on 28 March "that the painting was stolen by the Nazi occupation forces because Robert Bing was Jewish".
References.
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Further reading.
Monographs on the art and life of Courbet have been written by Estignard (Paris, 1874), D'Ideville (Paris, 1878), Silvestre in "Les artistes français" (Paris, 1878), Isham in Van Dyke's "Modern French Masters" (New York, 1896), Meier-Graefe, "Corot and Courbet" (Leipzig, 1905), Cazier (Paris, 1906), Riat (Paris, 1906), Muther (Berlin, 1906), Robin (Paris, 1909), Benedite (Paris, 1911) and Lazár Béla (Paris, 1911). Consult also Muther, "History of Modern Painting", volume ii (London, 1896, 1907); Patoux, "Courbet" in "Les artistes célèbres" and "La vérité sur Courbet" (Paris, 1879); Le Men, "Courbet" (New York, 2008).

Naked Woman Sleeping by the Water
Painting by Félix Vallotton
Naked Woman Sleeping by the Water (French: "Femme nue dormant au bord de l'eau") is an oil on canvas painting by the Swiss and French artist Félix Vallotton, from 1926. It was given to the Strasbourg museum by Vallotton's widow in 1926 and is now in the Strasbourg Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. Its inventory number is 55.974.0.879.
The woman's body, with its greenish shadows and uncomfortable posture, is deliberately depicted in an anti-naturalistic manner. The three rowing men on the right edge of the painting are supposed to be the products of the woman's dream. In any case, their movement and activity contrast with the sleeper's indolence and inertia.
References.
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The Nude Woman (1949 film)
1949 film
The Nude Woman (French: La femme nue) is a 1949 French drama film directed by André Berthomieu and starring Yves Vincent, Gisèle Pascal and Jean Tissier. It is based on the 1909 play of the same title by Henry Bataille. The film's sets were designed by the art director Raymond Nègre.
Synopsis.
The artist Pierre Bernier has earned fame for his painting "The Nude Woman" the model for which Loulou he has subsequently married. Now however Pierre is in love with a high society lady. In his her desperation to keep him Loulou attempts suicide.

The Nude Woman (1932 film)
1932 film
The Nude Woman (French: La Femme nue) is a 1932 French drama film directed by Jean-Paul Paulin and starring Florelle, Raymond Rouleau and Constant Rémy. The film is based on a play by Henry Bataille which has been adapted on several occasions. The fim is Paulin's directorial debut and a remake of the film by Léonce Perret, released in 1926 ("The Nude Woman)."
The film's sets were designed by Lazare Meerson.
References.
Notes
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Bibliography

Woman with a Parrot (Courbet)
Painting by Gustave Courbet
La Femme au perroquet ("Woman with a Parrot") is an oil painting on canvas by French artist Gustave Courbet. It was the first nude by the artist to be accepted by the Paris Salon in 1866 after a previous entry in 1864 was rejected as indecent. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York city.
Description.
The painting shows a woman reclining on her back, with a pet parrot alighting on an outstretched hand. While painted in a style to gain Academy acceptance in its pose and smooth flesh tones, the model's discarded clothes and disheveled hair were controversial, although less so than "Le Sommeil", painted the same year. Joanna Hiffernan likely posed for both paintings, as she did for others by Courbet.
The work is on view in the Metropolitan Museum's Gallery 811.
References.
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Nude on a Blue Cushion
Painting by Amedeo Modigliani
Nude on a Blue Cushion is an oil painting by Amedeo Modigliani, completed in 1917. It is currently on display at the National Gallery of Art. The painting depicts a nude woman relaxing on her side on a blue cushion. It is one of a series of nudes he painted from 1916-1919 commissioned by art dealer Leopold Zborowski. When the collection was displayed in Paris, the police reportedly shut it down on its opening day for its obscenity.

Femme et pot de moutarde
1910 painting by Pablo Picasso
Femme et pot de moutarde (English: Woman with Mustard Pot) is a 1910 painting by Pablo Picasso. The portrait shows Picasso's lover of the time, Fernande Olivier. The painting formed part of The Armory Show in New York, that introduced North America to Picasso and several other modern painters and sculptors, for a price of US$ 675.
The painting hangs in the collection of the Kunstmuseum Den Haag.
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Nu couché
1917 painting by Amedeo Modigliani
Nu couché (also known in English as Red Nude or "Reclining Nude") is a 1917 oil on canvas painting by the Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani. It is one of his most widely reproduced and exhibited paintings.
Painting.
The painting is one of a famous series of nudes that Modigliani painted in 1917 under the patronage of his Polish dealer Léopold Zborowski. It is believed to have been included in Modigliani's first and only art show in 1917, at the Galerie Berthe Weill, which was shut down by the police. Christie's lot notes for their November 2015 sale of the painting observed that this group of nudes by Modigliani served to reaffirm and reinvigorate the nude as a subject of modernist art.
Commentary.
"The Guardian" art critic Jonathan Jones claims that Modigliani continues the tradition of Titian's "Venus of Urbino" "glorifying the human body infuses the sexuality of Modigliani's nude", reinvented a decade before by the paintings of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Jones states that "Modigliani is a religious artist and his religion is desire."
2015 sale.
The painting realized $170,405,000 at a Christie's New York sale on 9 November 2015, a record for a Modigliani painting and placing it high among the most expensive paintings ever sold. The purchaser was the Chinese businessman Liu Yiqian. Liu is believed to have paid for the painting using his American Express card.
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Nude on the Chair
Painting by Pierre Bonnard
Nude on the Chair or Nude with Chair () is an oil-on-canvas painting by the French Post-Impressionist painter Pierre Bonnard. Created between 1935 and 1938, it is now held in the collection of the Bank of the Republic and exhibited at the Museo Botero, in Bogotá.
Description.
The work depicts the artist's partner and frequent model Marthe de Mėrigny after a bath in a tub, most probably at the artist's home in Arcachon. Marthe appears nude and standing on a white chair in the middle of the bathroom which appears as warm, shadowless, and light in color.
Fernando Botero, in hommage to Bonnard, interpreted "Nude with Chair" as an oil-on-canvas painting titled "El baño" (1999) which is also exhibited at the Museo Botero in Bogotá.
Ownership and provenance.
"Nude with Chair" remained part of Bonnard's estate, and later his inheritance, until his passing in 1947. The painting was acquired by Fernando Botero from an anonymous art collector in Europe months before donating it to the Bank of the Republic to form the Museo Botero along with 207 other paintings and sculptures.
Per Resolution 565, of 16 April 2012, of the Ministry of Culture of Colombia, the entirety of the Fernando Botero collection, including "Nude on the Chair", was voted on by the National Council of Cultural Heritage as an asset of cultural interest for the nation.
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Nude Against the Light
Painting by Pierre Bonnard
Nude Against the Light or Backlit Nude () is an oil-on-canvas painting by the French Post-Impressionist painter Pierre Bonnard, from 1908. It is now in the collection of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, in Brussels.
The work depicts the artist's partner and frequent model Marthe de Mėrigny applying eau de Cologne after a bath in a tub. She is nude and standing silhouetted against the windows which fills the room with bright warm shadowless light and colour. The bather is reflected in a mirror, a characteristic feature of Bonnard's paintings.
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The Nude Dancer
1952 film
The Nude Dancer (French: La danseuse nue) is a 1952 French comedy film directed by Pierre-Louis and starring Catherine Erard, Pierre Larquey and Jean Debucourt. The film's sets were designed by the art director Claude Bouxin. It is based on the interwar career of music hall star Colette Andris.
Synopsis.
A student gives up her studies and becomes a cabaret dancer leading to her fiancee breaking off their engagement. She marries an older man who helps her career by buying a nightclub.
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Woman on a High Stool
Painting by Henri Matisse
Woman on a High Stool (French: "Femme au tabouret" or "La femme assise") is an oil painting on canvas by the French artist Henri Matisse from early 1914. It is held in the Museum of Modern Art, in New York.
It is a portrait of Germaine Raynal, the wife of the poet and art critic Maurice Raynal. With its simplified geometric structure, dark contouring, and subdued palette, the work relates closely to Paul Cézanne and Cubism.
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Woman on a Black Divan
Painting by Jean-Jacques Henner
Woman on a Black Divan (French: La femme au divan noir), also known simply as Recumbent Woman (Femme couchée) is a 1869 painting by the French artist Jean-Jacques Henner. It is one of the 44 Henner paintings of the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Mulhouse. Its inventory number is D.58.1.22.
The painting was shown at the Paris Salon of 1869, and bought for the collection of the "Société industrielle de Mulhouse" (from which the Musée des Beaux-Arts originated) by the widow of Daniel Dollfus the same year. A much smaller version of the painting is kept in the Musée national Jean-Jacques Henner, in Paris, since 1923.
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Actors of the Comédie-Française
Painting by Antoine Watteau
Actors of the Comédie-Française, also traditionally known as The Coquettes (; from ), is an oil on panel painting in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, by the French Rococo artist Antoine Watteau (1684–1721). Variously dated within the 1710s by scholars, the painting forms a compact half-length composition that combines portraiture and genre painting, notably influenced by Venetian school, the Le Nain brothers, and Watteau's master Claude Gillot; one of the rarest cases in Watteau's body of work, it shows five figures — two women, two men, and a black boy — amid a darkened background, in contrary to landscapes that are usually found in Watteau's "fêtes galantes".
For three centuries, there were numerous attempts to identify the subject and the characters represented by Watteau; various authors thought the painting to be either a theatrical scene featuring commedia dell'arte masks, or a group portrait of Watteau's contemporaries. Beginning from the late 20th century, Russian and Western sources accept a theory developed within the Hermitage Museum that holds the painting to be a group portrait of the Comédie-Française players who performed in the playwright Florent Carton Dancourt's play "The Three Cousins". Given a variety of available interpretations, the painting has been known under a number of various titles; its traditional naming is derived from anonymous verses, with which the painting was published as an etching in the 1730s.
By the mid-18th century, "Actors of the Comédie-Française" belonged to Louis Antoine Crozat, Baron de Thiers, a nephew of the Parisian merchant and art collector Pierre Crozat; as part of the Crozat collection, the painting was acquired in 1772 for Empress Catherine II of Russia. Since then the painting was among Russian imperial collections in the Hermitage and, later, in the Gatchina Palace, before entering the Hermitage again in the 1920s; as part of the museum's permanent exhibition, it remains on display in the Winter Palace.
Description.
"Actors of the Comédie-Française" is an oil painting on a pearwood panel that measures approximately 20 by 25 cm. The painting is a compact half-length composition that shows five figures standing around a high wooden balustrade; most of the figures can be related to extant drawings, either directly or through comparable studies in Watteau's body of work. It has been noted by scholars that the half-length representation of Watteau's painting was influenced by Venetian painting; influences from French school such as the Le Nain brothers and Watteau's master Claude Gillot are also cited.
The rightmost figure is an outwardly old man dressed in a skullcap; he stands upon a cane in the left hand, while holding a mushroom hat in the right hand. The figure is generally associated with an early full-length sanguine study (PM 64; RP 75), published as an etching engraved by Jean Audran (FDC 157); the earlier version of the subject was introduced by Watteau in "Marriage Contract and Country Dancing" (now in the Prado, Madrid) and "L'Accordee du Village" (now in Sir John Soane's Museum, London). It has been noted, however, that the study is probably a reduced version of a larger, more vibrant study drawn from life, similar to other studies such as the ones located in the British Museum, London (PM 84; RP 130), and in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem (PM 53; RP 135), respectively. Given the rendering of the hand holding the cane and the quality of the man's face, it has been suggested that Watteau relied on additional drawings for the painting.
By the balustrade's other side, a young girl is shown in a lightly colored, striped dress with ruff, standing behind a black boy servant in green-striped clothes; over the girl's shoulder, a head of a young man, dressed as Mezzetino, appears in a large motley beret. The girl and the boy's figures are usually related to a Louvre sheet of eight head studies, with the boy's head directly adopted into the Hermitage painting; the girl's figure is also thought to be related to the Louvre drawing, exactly a girl's head notably used in a version of "The Embarkation for Cythera" located in the Charlottenburg Palace. Young people of color were a recurrent theme in Watteau's paintings and drawings, possibly influenced by works of Paolo Veronese; these are also present in "Les Charmes de la vie" (Wallace Collection, London), "La Conversation" (Toledo Museum of Art), and "Les Plaisirs du Bal" (Dulwich Gallery, London). The head of the young man has no directly related drawings, but is notably present, with slight differences, in "The Italian Comedians" now in the Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the figure has also been associated by Nemilova with a head on a sheet of studies located in a private collection in New York City (PM 746; RP 456) and, to a lesser success, with a figure from a sheet now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (PM 665; RP 475), while Yuri Zolotov thought the head to be related with Il Capitano's figure present in the Louvre-owned "Pierrot".
Opposite to the old man, the leftmost figure is a young woman turned to the right in profile, wearing Polish-styled red dress and white chipper, leaning on the balustrade and holding a black mask in the right hand; from the X-ray analysis, it has been found that she was to be bareheaded, wearing a different attire, and had to have her mask placed on the balustrade rather than holding it. Similarly to the old man's figure, the woman's figure has been related to an early, small, full-length study (RP 44) of a similarly dressed yet differently posed woman, that has been adopted into a more detailed drawing, later used in "The Polish Woman", traditionally but not definitively attributed to Watteau (now in the National Museum, Warsaw). Various studies of women's hands holding masks have been related to the painting, with a study in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (PM 828; RP 417), regarded as the closest. There is also a now untraced sanguine and black chalk study of the woman and the boy (PM 541; RP R591) that closely corresponds, albeit in reverse, with the painting; Parker and Mathey, who attributed the drawing to Watteau, considered it to be a preliminary study, and so did Nemilova and, during the 1984–1985 exhibition, Rosenberg; however, Eidelberg rejected that relation, as well as the sheet's authenticity, pointing out that the drawing is more corresponding to the etching rather than to the painting; in the 1996 catalogue raisonné, Rosenberg and Louis-Antoine Prat also list the sheet as rejected.
The painting is generally in good condition, despite losses and restorations underwent in the past. Damages found via visual observations include a restored crack along the old man's cloak, to the right; there are cracks in shaded areas, more importantly along the lower edge and around the girl's head; a loss has been painted in above the girl's left shoulder. X-ray analysis of the painting, performed by Soviet scholars in the 1970s, has also revealed alterations made to the leftmost figure during the painting's production: the woman was to be bare-headed rather than wearing the bonnet, and was to wear a free-flowing costume with horizontal stripes, different from a Polish-styled one found in the final painting; her hand didn't hold the mask, but lay on the banister.
Identity of the subject.
Until the middle of the 20th century, sources and studies on Watteau variously defined the work's subject. In notes to Pellegrino Antonio Orlandi's "Abecedario pittorico", Pierre-Jean Mariette referred to the work as "Coquettes qui pour voir galans au rendez vous" (), after the first verses of quatrains accompanying Thomassin's engraving for the "Recueil Jullienne"; Mariette thought the panel depicts "people in disguise for a ball, among whom is one dressed as an old man." François-Bernard Lépicié refers to the composition as "Retour de Bal" in a 1741 obituary of Henri Simon Thomassin, believing the figures to be returning from a ball; in contrary, "Catalogue Crozat" of 1755 and Dezallier d'Argenville "fils" described it as a depiction of masked figures preparing for a ball.
Later sources, more prominently in France and Russia, similarly had various definitions on the subject: Johann Ernst von Munnich refers to the work as "Personnages en masques" () in the manuscript catalogue of the Hermitage collection; the Hermitage's 1797 catalogue features the title "The Mascarade", whereas the 1859 inventory registry features only the work's description—"two women, talking with two men, and a negro beside them". In his writings, Pierre Hédouin referred to the work as "Le Rendez-vous du bal masqué", before Edmond de Goncourt's "Catalogue raisonné..." introduced the Mariette-mentioned title into common use.
In an 1896 article published in "Gazette des Beaux-Arts", the French author Gaston Schéfer was the first to consider "The Coquettes" to be based on portrait drawings rather than being a theatrical scene. Schéfer suggested from an inscription under Boucher's etching after the Berlin drawing, found in a copy of "Figures des differents caracteres" held by the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, that the old man on the right of the painting was modelled after Pierre-Maurice Haranger, a canon of the Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois who was a close friend of Watteau; the lady in red was thought by Schéfer to be the Comédie-Française actress Charlotte Desmares, based on comparison of the composition with Lepicié's etching of her portrait by Charles-Antoine Coypel. Later in the early 1900s, playwright Virgile Josz presumed the painting to be a depiction of commedia dell'arte masks, with the old man as Pantalone, the women as Rosaura and Isabella, and the young man as Scapino; in later years, these points were adopted by a number of scholars Josz's contemporary Louis de Fourcaud considered figures to be a family group dressed for an elegant masquerade."
In a 1950 monograph on Watteau, Hélène Adhémar identified the lady in red as Charlotte Desmares, similarly to Schéfer; Adhémar's point was furthered in Karl Parker and Jacques Mathey's 1957–1958 catalogue of Watteau drawings; they concluded that the old man could be another Comédie-Française player, Pierre Le Noir. In the Soviet Union, the Hermitage staff member Inna Nemilova supported these points, and also concluded the young man to be Philippe Poisson. In addition, Nemilova pointed out Desmares could be possibly depicted by Watteau in both versions of "The Embarkation for Cythera", and also other canvas and various drawings.
Provenance.
In an article on the Hermitage's 1922–1925 exhibition of French paintings, published in the March 1928 issue of "Gazette des Beaux-Arts", the Russian scholar Sergei Ersnt reported that according to an inscription found on the panel's verso, "The Coquettes" belonged to the painter Nicolas Bailly (1659–1736), a curator of the royal collections who authored a 1709–1710 inventory of the paintings in possession of King Louis XIV; in 1984, Rosenberg said that he wasn't surprised about Ernst's report, given Bailly's relations within artistic circles. The label has been deciphered as "N Bailly [prove]nant <...> de lonay aux gallery;" it has been noted that de Lonay was an expert mentioned by the Parisian merchant and art collector Pierre Crozat — once a patron of Watteau — in his last will and testament; in the early 1900s, Virgile Josz speculated that Crozat could once own the painting.
By the mid-18th century, "The Coquettes" came into possession of Louis Antoine Crozat, Baron de Thiers, Pierre Crozat's nephew; it was present in the 1755 catalogue of Crozat de Thiers' collection, and later in the 1771 inventory compiled by François Tronchin upon the collector's death. As part of the Crozat collection, "The Coquettes" was acquired for the Hermitage, then recently established by Empress Catherine the Great in Saint Petersburg. At some point in the mid-19th century, the painting was taken to the Gatchina Palace; it was present in the Oval Chamber, a personal room of Tsar Paul I in the palace's ground floor, where it was photographed in the early 1910s. In 1920, "The Coquettes" was restored to the Hermitage; as part of the museum's contemporary exhibition, the painting is on display in room 284, formerly the second room of military pictures in the Winter Palace.
Authorship.
Authenticity of the panel has never been seriously questioned until the early 20th century, when the Russian art historian Nicolas Wrangel considered it to be a copy by Philippe Mercier, a prominent English follower of Watteau; in a letter to the German scholar Ernst Heinrich Zimmermann, who compiled an album and catalogue of Watteau's work, Wrangel pointed out that the blond actress lacks the coiffure seen in Thomassin's print, and there were also differences in the actor at the right. On the Russian fellow's advice, Zimmermann had classified the painting among the "doubtful pictures". In the early 1970s, the panel's authenticity was questioned in the four-volume survey edited by Jean Ferré that, based on Wrangel's doubts and inconsistency found in contemporary sources, listed "The Coquettes" as "attributed to Watteau." Later studies have ruled reservations out, given the work's condition as well as related drawings and Thomassin's print; in the 1960s, Nemilova presumed Wrangel have been led to his conclusion because of the painting's obscurity during its provenance in the Gatchina Palace; much later, Martin Eidelberg adds that Mercier could not paint with the same characteristics and artistic level Watteau had.
Dating.
Dating of the painting remains somewhat imprecise, varying from early to late years of Watteau's career. In 1950, Adhémar listed "The Coquettes" as a Spring-Autumn 1716 work. In 1957, Charles Sterling suggested a 1716–1717 dating, while in 1959, Jacques Mathey proposed a relatively early date of 1714. Regarding aforementioned datings as too late, Nemilova dated the painting c. 1711–1712; the Soviet scholar based her dating on comparing the painting with "Du bel âge...", a lost painting by Watteau that is similarly a half-length composition, having compositional rhythm and visual features similar to these found on the Hermitage painting. In her dating, Nemilova also relied upon several other works attributed to the early 1710s by Adhémar and Mathey: "La Conversation", "The Dreamer", "La Polonnoise", and "Polish Woman"; to Nemilova, who considered Polish-styled costumes to be fashionable in France during the early 1710s, in light of the then recent Battle of Poltava, the sitter's dress was the most important point for her dating.
In later publications, a variety of dating is also given. In a 1968 catalogue raisonné, Ettore Camesasca preferred c. 1717, a dating also used by Donald Posner and Federico Zeri. In the 1980s, Marianne Roland Michel attributed "The Coquettes" to c. 1712–1714, but later in 1984, she dated it c. 1714–1715, objecting Nemilova's dating as too early and not taking into account the psychological study of subjects. In the 1984–1985 exhibition catalogue, Rosenberg also dates it c. 1714–1715, and so does Mary Vidal. In 2000, Helmut Börsch-Supan chose a later dating to c. 1718, and in 2002, Renaud Temperini proposed c. 1716–1717; in a 2004 thesis, Belova proposes a c. 1717–1718 dating, based on her analysis.
Related prints.
In the early 1730s, "Actors of the Comédie-Française" was published as an etching in reverse by Henri Simon Thomassin. The print was notably mentioned in François-Bernard Lépicié's obituary notice for Thomassin that appeared in the March 1741 issue of "Mercure de France", and later by Pierre-Jean Mariette in "Notes manuscrites"; in subsequent years, it served as a source to a number of pastiches.
Thomassin's etching was anonymously reproduced as a miniature print, captioned "L'Amour, sous un déguisment...". "A Favourite Sultana" (also called "Preparation for the Masquerade"), an oval stipple print depicting the turbaned woman at the right of Thomassin's engraving, was produced in London in 1785 by Italian-born artist Francesco Bartolozzi, and has the misleading declaration "Watteau pinxt." Another engraving of the composition, called "La Comédie italienne", was produced by Félix-Jean Gauchard after Thomassin's print, to accompany the entry on Watteau published in Charles Blanc's series "Histoire des peintres des toutes les écoles. École français" in 1862-63.
"Mascarade" (also spelled "Masquerade"), a mezzotint by French-born English printmaker John Simon, was mentioned by Charles Le Blanc and John Chaloner Smith in their respective studies, and was presumed to be a repetition of Thomassin's print by some authors (notably including Dacier and Vuaflart), given similarity in the number of characters.
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Homme au bain (painting)
1884 painting by Gustave Caillebotte
Homme au bain (English title: "Man at His Bath") is an 1884 oil painting by French Impressionist Gustave Caillebotte.
The canvas measures . It was held in private collections from the artist's death in 1894 until June 2011, when it was acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Description.
The subject of the painting is a male nude. A man is seen drying himself, having just come from a large metal bathtub in the corner of a plain room. His clothes are folded and placed on a nearby wooden chair, alongside his boots. A towel or robe is lying on the floor next to the tub. The man has left wet footprints on the wooden floor. He is naked and observed from behind with his towel covering only the mid part of his back.
Analysis.
By this point in his career, Caillebotte had painted many images with great fidelity to realistic portrayals of people and their environment. As with his "Les raboteurs de parquet" (English title: "The Floor Scrapers"), Caillebotte did not attempt to show an idealized form of masculinity, but instead depicted a typical 19th-century male.
Interpretations of this work contrast the masculinity of the image with the figure's vulnerability. Male nudes were not commonly depicted in Impressionist images, though female nudes were an established theme. Feminist critics have argued that images of nude females at their toilette were associated with prostitution in the 19th-century France. Thus, this image challenges traditional notions of masculinity and gender norms in domestic settings.
History and acquisition by the MFA.
Caillebotte created this work in 1884. He sent the painting to be exhibited at the "Les XX" show of 1888 in Brussels. The painting was controversial enough that it was removed from public view and placed in a small and inaccessible room. The painting was held by Caillebotte's heirs until it passed to another family, and then to a private collection in Switzerland in 1967.
In preparation for its "Degas and the Nude" exhibition in 2011, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), decided to purchase the painting, which it already had held on loan since earlier that year. The painting was bought for approximately $17 million. The chairman of the museum's European art department realized that they would be extremely unlikely to obtain donor funding for the purchase, because the painting depicted a male nude – difficult subject matter for attracting donors. To raise the funds, the MFA "deaccessioned" (sold) eight other paintings in its collection. The move was controversial, as the eight pieces had been given to the museum as gifts from benefactors. Those paintings were also by artists more recognized to the general public than the lesser-known Caillebotte: they included work by Monet, Renoir and Gauguin. Others defended the move by the MFA: "Boston Globe" editor Dante Ramos said acquiring the Caillebotte was "the kind of bold, adventurous move that a world-class museum ought to be making", while noting that there may not have been many benefactors willing to donate "a painting showing some random guy's naked butt." The painting became the museum's first Impressionist nude, and joined the one other work by Caillebotte, the still life "".
The deaccessioned paintings were sold at two auctions at Sotheby's in November 2011 for a total of $18.72 million. They were:
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Émilie Charmy
French painter (1878–1974)
Émilie Charmy (; April 2, 1878 – June 7, 1974) was an artist in France's early avant-garde. She worked closely with Fauve artists like Henri Matisse, and was active in exhibiting her artworks in Paris, particularly with Berthe Weill.
She had become an artist against the norms for French women in her day and became a well-regarded artist. She painted still lifes, landscapes, portraits, and figure paintings. Unusually for a woman at the time, she made a number of paintings of nude women in poses of sexual abandon. Charmy's initial works were Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. As her career evolved, she was influenced by Fauvism and the School of Paris movements.
Early life.
Émilie Espérance Barret was born on April 2, 1878, in Saint-Etienne, France.
She grew up in a bourgeois family; her grandfather was Bishop of Toulouse and her father owned an iron foundry. She had two older brothers, one whom died of appendicitis. Orphaned when she was 15, she and her older brother Jean Barret then lived with relatives in Lyon. Émilie had a talent for both art and music as a child.
Education.
Émilie received a bourgeois educational training at a Catholic private school, and qualified to become a teacher, which if a woman were to have a career was limited to education.
When living at Lyon, she refused teaching jobs in the late 1890s and went to study and work in the studio of Jacques Martin. This was a critical moment in the further development of her career. Martin was involved with a number of other Lyon artists who became influential in Émilie's artistic development, including Louis Carrand and François Vernay who had a local reputation for a unique approach to flower painting.
During this time she assumed the name Émilie Charmy as her pseudonym.
Career.
Overview.
When women were shunned from the French art world, and most women regarded painting as a hobby, Charmy was consumed by her work and was entirely financially dependent on her art. For her, "painting was an obsession which dominated many other aspects of her life".
Charmy primarily painted women in domestic or bourgeois settings, as well as pictures of flowers and still-life. Her flower paintings and still-life paintings were very marketable because they were considered decorative, and were sought after by the middle class. In regards to Charmy's nude paintings, Gill Perry proposes that Charmy is intentionally trying to restrict the viewer from the intimate scenes that she depicts.
French novelist Roland Dorgelès described Charmy as "a great free painter; beyond influences and without method, she creates her own separate kingdom where the flights of her sensibility rule alone." There is a great sense of abstraction in her images, with varying opinions by art critics. Her bold use of color and her unapologetic brushstrokes have been deemed as "appropriating...a 'masculine' language of art production", according to her contemporaries. The most famous quote came from Roland Dorgelès:
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It is Charmy's resistance to traditional gender roles that makes her unusual for her time. For her career and depiction of nude women in a period in which that was unusual for women, she epitomized the New Woman of the 19th century and early 20th century.
In terms of the business side of her career, Charmy refused to sign contracts with art dealers and gallery owners, save for one unsuccessful contract with the dealer Pétridès in the early 1930s.
Early career.
In the 1890s, Charmy began making Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings of subjects that ranged from prostitutes and brothels to scenes of middle-class family life. For instance, she made orient-influenced "Girl with a Fan" c. 1898–1900, a morphine addict in "Woman in an Armchair" c. 1897–1900, a group of nude prostitutes in "La Salon", cultured women in "Card Players" and "Interior in Saint-Etienne" c. 1897–1900.
In 1902 or 1903, Charmy and her brother left Lyon for Saint-Cloud, near Paris. Charmy exhibited her works in a number of galleries, but they were not exhibited with her male contemporary artists, and therefore were not assessed in the same professional manner as paintings made by male modernist painters. Her first documented show was at the "Salon des Indépendants" in 1904, and it is likely that it was through this show that she befriended other Fauve artists, like Henri Matisse, Charles Camoin, and Albert Marquet.
In 1905 she exhibited two still-life paintings titled "Dahlias" and "Fruit", at the Salon d'Automne. Which were seen and appreciated by Berthe Weill, who from then on promoted her work and became a good friend. In 1906, she showed 5 flower paintings and one still life titled "Prunes", also at the Salon d'Automne.
Fauvism.
Influenced by other artists at the time such as Matisse, she integrated Fauvism techniques into her paintings, as seen in "Woman in a Japanese Dressing G