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Lot Essay
Brimming with energy, La Bacchante ou Nu allongé dans un paysage reimagines a theme deeply embedded in art history while radiating a distinctly modern sensibility. Painted by André Lhote in 1911, the present work is seminal in the artist’s oeuvre as it captures the dawn of the unique Cubist pictorial style with which Lhote is still strongly associated today.
Born in 1885, Lhote started his artistic career at thirteen working as an apprentice woodcarver before going on to study decorative sculpture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux. When Lhote was twenty, he moved to Paris to dedicate himself to painting. In 1907, he showcased his work at the Salon d'Automne where he witnessed the Paul Cezanne retrospective. Like many of his contemporaries, Lhote was profoundly influenced by Cezanne’s radical approach to the construction of a composition, as exemplified by La Bacchante ou Nu allongé dans un paysage. In also rejecting a traditional approach to linear perspective and simplifying forms to their geometric foundations, Lhote relies on color to relay the space relations between the subject matter.
Executed a year prior to Lhote’s official exhibition with the Cubists at the Salon de la Section d'Or in 1912, La Bacchante ou Nu allongé dans un paysage attests to the artist’s ongoing experimentation with Fauvism and early identification with Cubism. The work balances a vibrant color palette realized through energetic brushwork with skillfully incorporated Cubist techniques and infuses styles to reconcile tradition with modernity in its rendering of the reclining nude. The angular movement of the woman’s arms continues in the fan spread beside her and the treetops in the periphery, while the plate in the foreground responds to the soft curves in her rosy physique, the clouds above, and the arch of the bridge. Lhote does not conform to a naturalistic depiction of a woman in repose, but instead accommodates the structure of the canvas, applying bold contrasting colors to build shapes according to their relationship with the overlaying pictorial grid.
Lhote firmly believed in the importance of artistic tradition, as demonstrated by his choice to portray a subject that has fascinated artists since ancient times. In La Bacchante ou Nu allongé dans un paysage, he places a nude follower of Bacchus at the heart of his composition, classically framing her sensuous figure. The assortment of fruit and fan included alongside her serve as additional nods to a richer artistic heritage. Yet the present work is anything but traditional.
Born in 1885, Lhote started his artistic career at thirteen working as an apprentice woodcarver before going on to study decorative sculpture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux. When Lhote was twenty, he moved to Paris to dedicate himself to painting. In 1907, he showcased his work at the Salon d'Automne where he witnessed the Paul Cezanne retrospective. Like many of his contemporaries, Lhote was profoundly influenced by Cezanne’s radical approach to the construction of a composition, as exemplified by La Bacchante ou Nu allongé dans un paysage. In also rejecting a traditional approach to linear perspective and simplifying forms to their geometric foundations, Lhote relies on color to relay the space relations between the subject matter.
Executed a year prior to Lhote’s official exhibition with the Cubists at the Salon de la Section d'Or in 1912, La Bacchante ou Nu allongé dans un paysage attests to the artist’s ongoing experimentation with Fauvism and early identification with Cubism. The work balances a vibrant color palette realized through energetic brushwork with skillfully incorporated Cubist techniques and infuses styles to reconcile tradition with modernity in its rendering of the reclining nude. The angular movement of the woman’s arms continues in the fan spread beside her and the treetops in the periphery, while the plate in the foreground responds to the soft curves in her rosy physique, the clouds above, and the arch of the bridge. Lhote does not conform to a naturalistic depiction of a woman in repose, but instead accommodates the structure of the canvas, applying bold contrasting colors to build shapes according to their relationship with the overlaying pictorial grid.
Lhote firmly believed in the importance of artistic tradition, as demonstrated by his choice to portray a subject that has fascinated artists since ancient times. In La Bacchante ou Nu allongé dans un paysage, he places a nude follower of Bacchus at the heart of his composition, classically framing her sensuous figure. The assortment of fruit and fan included alongside her serve as additional nods to a richer artistic heritage. Yet the present work is anything but traditional.