In July 1909, summering with his family in the South of France, Matisse prepared for a commission from Russian businessman Sergei Shchukin. Although the eventual result was two decorative panels representing dance and music, the artist’s plan originally included a composition of bathers, to which this canvas relates. As Matisse worked on Bather he made many adjustments in pencil and paint to the form and pose of the figure. He repositioned the bather on the canvas, modeling the body's volumes and adjusting earlier contours with long, repeated brushstrokes.
Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917, July 18–October 11, 2010.
Provenance Research Project
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1909, Henri Matisse
Paul Guillaume, Paris
Georges Bénard (Bénard Frères et Cie), Paris
June 9, 1933 – 1935, Galerie Étienne Bignou, Paris and New York, purchased through Hôtel Drouot, Paris, at the auction Tableaux modernes, aquarelles, gouaches, pastels. Collection G.B. … première vente aux enchères publiques après liquidation judiciaire Bénard Frères et Cie, en vertu de l’ordonnance de Monsieur le Juge Commissaire et à la requete de Me Mauger, Liquidateur Judiciaire, June 9, 1933 (cat. no. 63)
1936, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, purchased from Galerie Étienne Bignou by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller
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Henri Matisse
French, 1869–1954 428 works onlineThroughout his decades-long career as a painter, sculptor, draftsman, and printmaker, Henri Matisse continuously searched, in his own words, “for the same things, which I have perhaps realized by different means.
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