Impressionist & Modern Art

The Female Form

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Throughout art history, the female form has served as a source of tremendous inspiration. But at the start of the 20th century, artists began considering this revered muse from new, varying perspectives, creating works that invite viewers to explore the contradictions that the female form can embody: at once soft and strong, loving and lonely, exquisite and simple. In effect, artists began creating works that show women as they had not been shown before.

The Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale, taking place 28 October, includes several important explorations of the female form from artists Mary Cassatt, Pierre Bonnard, Émile Bernard, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro and others.

The Female Form

  • Pierre Bonnard
    La Chevelure d'or
    Oil on canvas
    26⅛ by 21 in.
    66.5 by 53.5 cm
    Painted in 1924.
    ESTIMATE $1,800,000 – 2,500,000
    The present work is a resplendent scene from the artist’s Mediterranean-inspired oeuvre. This quintessential interior seamlessly melds the artist’s subjects with their surroundings and glorifies a quotidian moment in luminous swathes of pigment. Demonstrating Bonnard’s profound mastery of color, the work draws attention to the rich, jewel-like tones of the fruit and women’s clothing and plays on the signature features of the artist’s two main muses of the time: Bonnard’s lover, the effervescent blonde Renée Monchaty, and his mysterious dark-haired companion and eventual wife, Marthe de Méligny.
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  • Mary Cassatt
    The Sun Bath, with Three Figures
    Signed Cassatt (lower right)
    Oil on canvas
    25 ½ by 36 ⅛ in.
    64.1 by 91.8 cm
    Painted in 1898-99.
    ESTIMATE $2,500,000 – 3,500,000
    Cassatt returned to maternal subject matter throughout her career, exploring the relationship between mother and child for over three decades. Her works of this subject have come to define her oeuvre much as Degas’ continual return to the subject of ballet dancers has defined his. In the present, thoroughly modern work, Cassatt brilliantly combines areas of near abstraction with more highly finished passages to focus the viewer’s attention solely on the interaction of the two female figures and the baby.
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  • Camille Pissarro
    Femme à la brouette
    Signed C. Pissarro. and dated 1892 (lower left)
    Oil on canvas
    18¼ by 15⅛ in.
    46.3 by 38.5 cm
    Painted in 1892.
    ESTIMATE $1,800,000 – 2,500,000
    In the present work a woman pushes a wheelbarrow of cabbages along a narrow country lane, followed by a tottering blonde child, presumably her daughter. More than any other Impressionist artist, Pissarro sought to depict rural workers without a specific agenda, whether to contemplate their plight or romanticize their bucolic surroundings, and "Pissarro was perhaps the first great painter of French rural life who actually revealed a kind of relaxed beauty in fieldwork, which he associated with women as much as with men” (R. Bretell, Pisarro’s People (exhibition catalogue), Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco & Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, 2011-12, p. 171).
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  • Émile Bernard
    Les Gauleuses de pommes
    Signed Emile Bernard (lower left)
    Oil on canvas
    35⅛ by 46 in.
    89.2 by 116.8 cm
    Painted circa 1892.
    ESTIMATE $500,000 – 700,000
    Les Gauleuses de pommes depicts Breton peasant women picking apples. Bernard’s treatment emphasizes the religious undertones of the subject, alluding to the spiritual purity which the artist assigned to the Breton people. The composition is inspired by Medieval tapestries, with sinuous Gothic lines forming a frieze-like arrangement, while the palette and application of color serves to underscore the pure nature of the subject matter, with the apples rendered in strong oranges with bold outlines to create the impression that they are rolling towards the viewer.
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  • Edgar Degas
    Grande arabesque, troisième temps
    Stamped Degas, numbered 60/J and stamped with the foundry mark A.A. Hébrard Cire Perdue
    Bronze
    Length: 22¼ in.
    56.5 cm
    Conceived circa 1885-90 and cast before 1930.
    ESTIMATE $500,000 – 700,000
    Degas's dancers are perhaps the most celebrated figures of his oeuvre. Fascinated by the boundless flexibility of their bodies, he experimented with depicting dancers in a variety of poses throughout his career. In the present work, the dancer’s left leg is extended backwards and at an oblique angle to the ground with her right arm extended forwards, acting as a counterbalance. This position, known as an arabesque, is one of the most animated poses of the ballet, and was a subject Degas turned to.
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  • Edgar Degas
    Grande arabesque, deuxième temps
    Stamped Degas, numbered 15F and stamped with the foundry mark A.A. Hébrard Cire Perdue
    Bronze
    Length: 24⅜ in.
    62 cm
    Conceived circa 1885-90 and cast by 1921.
    ESTIMATE $400,000 – 600,000
    Degas’s interest in movement is beautifully captured in the present work, with the young dancer bestowed with a heightened balance and poise; caught in a moment of absolute equilibrium, her figure allows Degas to convey both stillness and a sense of boundless movement.
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