Firmin Massot

Albert Dunant, Geneva (1843-1929);
Private collection, Geneva.

Geneva, Musée d'art et d'histoire, Exposition d'oeuvres du peintre genevois Firmin Massot (1766-1849) appartenant à des collections privées, 1927, no. 29.

D. Baud-Bovy, Peintres genevois, Geneva 1904, pp. 73, reproduced p. 76, fig. 47 (as La Baigneuse);
C. Brun, Schweizerisches künstler-lexikon, Frauenfeld 1908, vol. II, p. 337 (as La Baigneuse);
L. Boissonnas, Wolfgang-Adam Töpffer: Catalogue raisonné des Peintures, Bern 2011, p. 293, cat. no. LBP 397, reproduced (as a collaboration between Firmin Massot and Wolfgang-Adam Töpffer).

The panel is uncradled and beveled on all four sides. The paint surface has been very well retained and there is lovely detail in the figure and background areas. There is an overall craquelure pattern that is most noticeable in the background foliage at center, to the right and lower right of the figure, and in her lower right leg. Some minor scuffing at upper edge. Under UV light: nothing fluoresces apart from one tiny retouch at lower right. The painting is presentable and could be hung as is. In a gilt wood frame with stylized leaves and flowers at corners.
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This painting is likely an academic study of a nude, a rare subject for Firmin Massot, the celebrated Genevan portraitist who trained at the Ecole de dessin de la Sociéte des Arts.  Massot likely found inspiration for this composition in engravings and copies after sixteenth century Italian paintings, such as Sebastiano del Piombo's The Death of Adonis (Uffizi Gallery, Florence).  While this work is not a portrait, the sitter’s delicately rendered face is consistent with portraits that Massot produced in the final years of the eighteenth century.

Although the painting has recently been published as a collaboration between Firmin Massot and Wolfgang-Adam Töpffer, Dr. Valérie Louzier-Gentaz has kindly confirmed that it is a fully autograph work by Firmin Massot that will be included as such in her forthcoming catalogue raisonné on the artist.¹

1. See L. Boissonnas, under Literature.