Félix Vallotton

A. & H. Hahnloser, Winterthur (acquired directly from the artist in 1912)
Emil Hahnloser, Zürich & Paris (by descent from the above)
Gustav August & Ida Hahnloser-Hoz, Zürich (by descent from the above)
Galerie Vallotton, Lausanne (acquired in 1951)
Oscar Ghez, Geneva (acquired in 1957)
Sale : Finarte, Milan, 9 April 1968
Private Collection, Italy (acquired at the above sale)
By descent to the present owner

Rome, Museo del Risorgimento, Il nudo del Novecento, 1997-98, n.n.

Marina Ducrey, Félix Vallotton 1865-1925, L’œuvre peint, Zürich & Lausanne, 2005, vol. III, no. 887, illustrated p. 515

The canvas is not lined. The colours are fresh and luminous. Close inspection reveals some very faint hairline shrinkage in the pale green pigment. Under UV light three areas fluoresce: an approx. 4x1cm patch near the upper right corner, a 4cm vertical line above the head and a tiny spot on the upper left edge; otherwise this work is in overall good condition.
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1911 marked the end of a period during which Félix Vallotton devoted himself almost exclusively to female nudes.

Petite Baigneuse assise sur le sable is a magnificent example of the glacial eroticism that emanates from the nudes from this time, as marina Ducrey explains, "The sixty something nudes painted between 1905 and 1919 centre for the most part on drawings sketched in front of the model and almost always stripped of any details other than the figure herself. At the moment when she is transposed onto canvas, she is fixed in the context to which he has assigned her - a pseudo-coastal  landscape, a divan or an artists studio - without being subjected to the effects of ambient light, since her rendering remains that of the original drawing as revealed by the light in which it was executed. Therein lies the artificial, unreal, almost supernatural aspect of many of these nudes, in the smoothest flesh tones often unfeasibly changed by the environment" (Marina Ducrey, ‘Glacé Vallotton’, Félix Vallotton, le feu sous la glace, Paris, 2013, p. 30).

These strikingly cut-out bodies recall the dryness of the xylographic technique mastered by the artist but also his admiration for great painters who focussed on drawing such as Poussin and Ingres. The painter who had wept with emotion upon seeing Ingres’ Bain turc in a retrospective at the Salon d’Automne in 1905 would later declare that “nothing more than the way in which Ingres inserts form into his line, enable me to feel the warmth of the woman’s body and the weight of her breast” (quoted in op cit, p. 30).

The dramatic pose of Petite Baigneuse assise sur le sable, turning her back to the spectator in a voluptuous arabesque, contributes to the charm of this subtly erotic painting, heightened by the refined treatment of shadow and contour.