RUPERT BUNNY

The artist's estate
Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, 1945 & 1948 (label on the reverse)
Purchased by A. J. L. McDonnell in late 1940s/1950s on behalf of the Griffith sisters; thence by descent to present owners
Private collection, New South Wales

Exposition Rupert C. W. Bunny, Galeries Georges Petit, Paris, 16 - 31 March 1917, cat. 28, as 'Bain de soleil'
Exhibition of Paintings by Rupert C. W. Bunny, The Fine Art Society's Gallery, Melbourne, 15 - 27 November 1922, cat. 9
An Exhibition of Oil Paintings and Drawings by Rupert C. W. Bunny, Anthony Hordern & Sons Limited, Sydney, 2 - 31 May 1923, cat. 9
First Contemporary All-Australian Art Exhibition, International Art Centre of Roerich Museum, New York, February 1931, cat. 4, touring Washington, Memphis, Milwaukee, Baltimore, Albany, December 1931 (label on the reverse)
Exhibition of French Landscapes and A Group of Earlier Paintings by Rupert Bunny, Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, 18 September - 8 October 1945, 'Earlier Paintings', cat. 2
Earlier Paintings by Rupert Bunny, Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, 14 January - 2 February 1948, cat. 7

The Age, 15 November 1922, p. 14
The Argus, 15 November 1922, p.14
The Bulletin, 23 November 1922, p. 34
The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 May 1923, p. 14

Work is framed is original Thallon frame that requires some repair. Work would benefit from a light clean. Very good original condition.
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Rupert Bunny's 1917 Paris exhibition was packed with paintings endowed with such titles as After the Bath, Dreaming and In Sunlight, capturing moments of 'sweet idleness', to borrow another title favoured by him. In Sunbath and its companion works, the earlier elegance of his Belle Epoque paintings was translated into more modern terms, with influences of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism to the fore. The noted French critic, Gustave Geffroy, described these paintings as 'studies in colour and light...' calling Bunny 'an observer of truth and a poet of the world of dreams.'¹ But there had been an important change in his art, brought on by the Great War and the end of an era of unsurpassed elegance. 'When short skirts came in', Bunny said years later to his Sydney dealer, Lucy Swanton of the Macquarie Galleries, 'I no longer wanted to paint women.' ²  The interest of a lifetime, however, was not abandoned but converted - images were confined to moments of privacy, where the fashion of the outside world could be ignored in favour of the freedom of flouncy tea gowns and 'floating draperies'. ³ As in Sunlight, circa 1917, the nude, of course, was not dictated to by any slavery to fashion, although the surroundings are filled with touches of Orientalism - the rug, hangings, and a screen decorated with images of ducks. Above all it is the delicious handling of the flesh tones that attracts attention. Bathed in luminous sunlight, the figure is painted in the most opalescent of colours in an amorous interplay of lights and darks. Bunny engaged aqua blue, for example, for both the fan and the shade it gives the face - then allows it to flow through all the enveloping shadows. Although the female nude features frequently in Bunny's art, and a large number of his pen and ink drawings of nudes have survived, he seldom painted pictures devoted solely to this subject.

The motif of women bathing, by water or in the sun, appealed greatly to Bunny and runs as a leitmotif throughout his art. An early example among many, Au bord de la mer (University of Western Australia Art Collection) was exhibited in Paris in the Old Salon of 1898. Après le bain was the first of Bunny's paintings to be acquired by the French Government for the Musée du Luxembourg in 1904; Bathers (Une scene au bain), circa 1906 is now in the collection of the Queensland Art Gallery; and an earlier Sunbath, circa 1913 is in the Bendigo Art Gallery. Two works titled Le Bain de soleil were included in his 1921 Paris exhibition of colour monotypes; and again in the 1921 New Salon Bunny exhibited L'Abri (National Gallery of Victoria). As all these works show, Bunny was the master of intimate moments of relaxation.

We are most grateful to David Thomas for assistance in cataloguing this work.

1. G. Geffroy, catalogue introduction to Rupert Bunny solo exhibition, Galeries Georges Petit, Paris, 1917
2. L. Swanton, 'Some Personal recollections of Rupert Bunny in the Forties', typewritten manuscript, Sydney, 1967
3. Geffroy, op.cit.