Rupert Charles Wulsten Bunny

Galerie Georges Petit, Paris
Private Collection (sale: Sotheby's, New York, 24th February 1988, lot 135)
Richard Green Fine Paintings, London
Acquired from the above by the present owner on 11th May 1994

Paris, Salon de 1907, no. 16
Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, Exposition Rupert C.W. Bunny, 1917, (possibly) no. 25

The board is stable and has three vertical and two horizontal batons on the reverse which are ensuring an even and secure structural support. There appear to be a few spots of retouching, visible under UV light, most notably in the lower right corner on the tablecloth and above and to the right of the signature, some horizontal lines in the upper right of the composition, around the framing edges and a few spots and lines on the dark green cushions behind the reclining girl. Otherwise, this work is in very good condition.
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Rupert Charles Wulsten Bunny is without doubt the foremost Australian Impressionist painter, whose work features in private and public collections across Australia and Europe.  Bunny settled in Paris in 1886, and married a French art student Jeanne Morel in 1902. He would become an established member of the Parisian art scene, and indeed the city and its art would have a profound effect on him. The influence of artists such as Edouard Manet and Berthe Morisot are clearly evident in his work.

It was Belle Epoque Paris that provided Bunny with a major theme - that of the daily life of the leisured middle classes, specifically of women. Between 1906 and 1911, images of women dominate his work, with his model, often his wife, depicted in richly decorated interiors. Deborah Edwards describes how his work depicted women 'engaged in minor domestic tasks linked to defining femininity, which depress narrative, or involved in no tasks at all but contemplating, listening to music, waiting, sleeping. Bunny's visions of bourgeois leisure involve women both inhabiting and constructing worlds' (Deborah Edwards, Rupert Bunny, artist in Paris, Art Gallery of New South Wales, p. 73).

At once imposing and intimate, Femme lisant is a remarkable example of a key Impressionist theme: that of the woman depicted in an elaborate interior setting, with the viewer occupying the role of voyeur. The present work is a wonderfully evocative scene, the loose brushwork of the dress successfully capturing the figure's femininity and grace. The woman is lost in the world of the book she is swept up in, an escapism that is reflected in the richly decorative fabrics and wall paper that surrounds her. The woman reading is a subject that fascinated not only the Impressionists, but many other great masters of the twentieth century, perhaps most famously Pablo Picasso: it is woman in her most transported, intangible, and mysterious state, in other words, at her most desirable. This elaborately decorated room that she inhabits invites comparison with the sumptuous settings employed by other Impressionists such as Édouard Vuillard, and the two artists also share a fascination in the private domestic moment as a worthy artistic theme. Of course this voyeurism was also famously explored by Edgar Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, in many different settings but most effectively in their explorations of the nude in her bathroom. 

Bunny participated in major exhibitions from the outset, including the Paris Salon in 1889, where his painting The Tritons won an honourable mention.  In 1900 he was awarded the Bronze Medal, and such successes were consolidated when the French government purchased two works for the Luxembourg collection in 1904 and 1906. A total of nine other paintings were purchased by the government for French public collections.

The present work is a wonderfully sumptuous and evocative example of his work of this period. Rich in both textural and art historical references, Bunny achieves a dreamlike atmosphere where the viewer feels privileged to be witness, for just a moment, to a private world.

Bunny was one of the first living Australian artists to be given a retrospective, and in 1991 his place in the pantheon of Australian art was confirmed by a major retrospective at the National Gallery of Australia.