The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 6, 2023

The Bath

c. 1900

Félix Bracquemond

(French, 1833–1914)

France, 19th century

Brush and black and brown wash with pen and black ink, black chalk, and charcoal, heightened with white chalk, on brown wove paper laid on yellow-beige wove paper

Support: Brown wove paper laid down on yellow-beige(2) wove paper

Sheet: 59 x 44 cm (23 1/4 x 17 5/16 in.)

Bequest of Noah L. Butkin 1980.240

Location

not on view

Fun Fact

Bracquemond drew extensively and promoted the medium as the source of all artistic practice.

Description

This drawing relates to Félix Bracquemond’s interest in integrating various artistic techniques, a practice that became increasingly common around 1900. With a range of black and white media, the artist depicted a nude in a forest pool. Faint gridding was used to transfer the image either to or from a similar enamel and a print. An important part of this working process, the drawing was included in both of the major exhibitions of Bracquemond’s oeuvre during his life. From one of these displays, in 1907, Bracquemond sold it to Parisian collector Alfred Beurdeley, who acquired hundreds of drawings with the aim of representing the art of his time.

Inscriptions

Inscription

inscribed, lower right, in brown ink: Bracquemond; inscribed, at bottom, in black chalk: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8; at lower right, in black ink: mark of Alfred Beurdeley [Lugt 421]

Provenance
by 1907-1919
Alfred Beurdeley [1847-1919, Lugt 421], Paris
1920
(his ninth sale, November 30 and December 2, 1920, no. 50, sold to Boutet)
1920-?
Boutet
by 1979-1980
Noah Butkin [1918-1980], Shaker Heights, OH, bequeathed to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
1980-
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Citations
Œuvres de Bracquemond. Exh. cat. Paris: Société nationale des beaux-arts, 1907. Mentioned: p. 3, no. 33
Catalogue de l’exposition de gravures, exécutées par M. Félix Bracquemond et Sir F. Seymour Haden. Paris: Hôtel des Modes, 1909. Mentioned: p. 16, no. 274
Catalogue des dessins, pastels, aquarelles modernes [. . .] composant la collection de M. A. Beurdeley (première vente). Paris: Galerie Georges Petit, 1920. Mentioned: p. 13, no. 50 bibliotheque-numerique.inha.fr
Bouillon, Jean-Paul. "An Artistic Collaboration: Bracquemond and Baron Vitta." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 66, no. 8 (Nov. 1979): 311-19. Mentioned: p. 319n17; Reproduced: p. 315, fig. 7
Lee, Sherman E. "The Year in Review for 1980." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 68, no. 6 (June 1981): 163-219. Mentioned: pp. 182, 215; Reproduced: p. 181
Bouillon, Jean-Paul. Félix Bracquemond et les arts décoratifs, du japonisme à l’Art nouveau. Exh. cat. Limoges: Musée National Adrien-Dubouché, 2005. Mentioned: p. 199
Exhibition history

Œuvres de Bracquemond (Salon de 1907). Société nationale des beaux-arts, Paris (1907).

Exposition de gravures exécutées par M. Félix Bracquemond et Sir F. Seymour Haden. Hôtel des modes, Paris (February 1909).

Year in Review: 1980. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (June 24-July 19, 1981).

Nineteenth-Century French Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 20-April 30, 2023).

Source URL: https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1980.240