Provenance
Sotheby's, Paris, 13 December 2006, Lot 15
Private Collection, UK
Exhibited
Dinard, Palais des Arts, Foujita, le maître japonais de Montparnasse, 27 June - 25 September 2004, no. 13, p. 41 (illustrated)
Valence, Centro Cultural Bancaixa, 19 July -4 September 2005; Barcelona, Museo Diocesano, 7 September - 23 October 2005, Foujita entre Oriente y Occidente, no. 15, p. 143 (illustrated)
Literature
Sylvie Buisson, Foujita Inédits catalogue général raisonné Volume 3, Editions A l'encre rouge, Archives artistiques, Fondation Nichido, Paris, 2007, no. C17.134.A, p. 85
(illustrated)
Catalogue Essay
The early 1900s are considered the most formative of Foujita’s years of execution, making works from this period rare and highly sought after. At the turn of the 20th Century, Foujita left his native Japan and embarked on a voyage to Paris, where he met and befriended vanguards of the art world—Amedeo Modigliani, Fernand Léger, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse, among others. It was during this period that Foujita refined the style for which he is best known, and it is in the present work Baigneuses that we detect the then-young artist’s linear refinement and mastery of colour.

1917 marked an important year in Foujita’s life. Returning to Paris from London where he stayed during the war, Foujita married Fernande Barrey, and entered a contract with Guillaume Chéron, Modigliani’s dealer—and a new stylistic preoccupation began to pervade the artist’s works. In Baigneuses, created in the same year, the bathers’ elongated faces, almond-shaped eyes, and angular figures allude to Modigliani’s signature style, and one detects hints of Matisse through the lucidity of the rhythmic lines that outline the bathers. These are artists with whom Foujita would no doubt have been influenced by and yet, the work is quintessentially Foujita: meticulously executed fine lines capture the delicate scene of the bathers, their bodies outlined in a translucent blue hue. In the background, abstract plants and a meandering river stream frame the scene, and inject depth into the work.

Baigneuses depicts nude bathers, a classical subject that has proliferated Western art history, and until the late nineteenth century, circulated the theme of romanticised female nudes and the uninvited viewer. This visual trope has since been reinterpreted and revisited by a myriad of artists ranging from Modern masters such as Paul Cézanne, Paul Gaugin, Pierre-August Renoir, Matisse, and Picasso. These Modern Artists removed the bathers from the mythological or biblical setting – for example Diana and Actaeon by Titian or Susanna and the Elders by Rembrandt – and presented them in a naturalistic environment, departing from the former allegorical or titillating interpretations. Picasso’s Les Baigneuses was painted a year after Foujita’s Baigneuses. Similarities can be drawn between the two as the stylisation of the body shape and placement of arms in Les Baigneuses is reminiscent of the figures in Baigneuses. These similarities do not come as a surprise as Foujita and Picasso had met on several ocassions. Foujita had visited Picasso’s studio with fellow artist, Manuel Ortiz de Zárate in 1913, and Picasso had bought numerous works at Foujita’s first solo exhibition at Gallery Chéron in June 1917. The energetic composition that emanate from the figures in both paintings is a testimony to the influence Foujita and Picasso had on each other; as well as Foujita’s vision to conciliate with Western art, and yet, Baigneuses is also characteristically Far Eastern, typified by the flat perspective and the artist’s dexterous manipulation of ink, brush and medium. It is these two realms—East and West—that Foujita straddles and masters.

[Comp image:]

Pablo Picasso
Les Baigneuses, 1918
oil on canvas
27 x 22 cm
© Succession Picasso, 2018 © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso - Paris)

12

Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita

Bathers

1917
signed and dated 'Paris Tsuguharu Foujita [in Kanji] T. Foujita 1917' lower right
watercolour and ink on paper
41 x 23.5 cm. (16 1/8 x 9 1/4 in.)
Executed in 1917.

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Foujita/Sanyu: Muses and Models

Hong Kong Selling Exhibition 18-31 May 2019

1
Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita
Nude with Raised Arms
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2
Sanyu
Seated Woman
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3
Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita
Contemplating Woman
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4
Sanyu
Kneeling Nude
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5
Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita
Nu allongé, Madeleine
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6
Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita
Portrait de Madame Hélène Berthelot
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7
Toshio Bando
Nude
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8
Sanyu
Femme à la fleur (Woman smelling flowers)
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9
Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita
Madeleine
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10
Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita
Naiade
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11
Sanyu
Reclining nude
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12
Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita
Bathers
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13
Sanyu
Seated Nude
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14
Sanyu
Standing nude
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15
Sanyu
Seated Nude
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16
Sanyu
Seated Nude
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17
Sanyu
Reclining Nude
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18
Sanyu
Standing Nude
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19
Sanyu
Standing Nude
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20
Sanyu
Seated Woman
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21
Sanyu
Reclining Nude
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22
Sanyu
Seated Nude
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23
Sanyu
Woman’s Leg
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24
Sanyu
Standing Nude
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25
Sanyu
Standing Nude
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26
Sanyu
Standing Woman
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27
Sanyu
Standing Woman
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28
Sanyu
Woman Drawing
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29
Sanyu
Woman’s Profile
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30
Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita
Profil de jeune femme blonde au chignon (Portrait of a blond young girl with a bun)
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31
Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita
Le mépris
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32
Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita
Petite fille avec deux chats
Estimate HK$120,000 - 180,000
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33
Sanyu
Reclining Nude
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34
Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita
Madeleine Sleeping
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35
Sanyu
Seated woman drawing
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36
Sanyu
Standing Man
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37
Sanyu
Seated woman
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38
Sanyu
Reclining nude
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39
Sanyu
Seated woman
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40
Sanyu
Etudes de main (Study of hands)
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41
Sanyu
Seated woman
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42
Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita
Les deux amies
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43
Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita
Untitled
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44
Sanyu
Seated woman with extended leg
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45
Sanyu
Seated nude
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46
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Standing Nude
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47
Sanyu
Seated Nude
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48
Sanyu
Standing nude
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49
Sanyu
Standing nude with bended leg
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50
Sanyu
Femme nu assise (Reclining nude)
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51
Sanyu
Leaning Nude
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52
Sanyu
Standing woman with raised arms (double sided)
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53
Sanyu
Standing nude (double sided)
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Foujita/Sanyu: Muses and Models

Hong Kong Selling Exhibition 18-31 May 2019

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Provenance

Exhibited

Literature

Catalogue Essay

12

Léonard-Tsuguharu Foujita

Bathers

Foujita/Sanyu: Muses and Models

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