József RIPPL-RÓNAI (Kaposvár 1861- Kaposvár 1927) - Lot 202

József RIPPL-RÓNAI (Kaposvár 1861- Kaposvár 1927) Nudes in the Studio of Villa Róma Painted in 1912. Oil on board, signed lower left "Rónai". H. 69.5 cm - W. 98 cm On the back of the board, signed and dated "Rippl-Rónai 1912" and the old label of the carrier "ALADAR-EISLER" in Budapest, mentioning "KANN-KOSTOLANY N°1". Central cardboard fold, restorations. Provenance : Collection of Gyula Kostolányi Kann (André Kostolany's paternal uncle). Exhibition: "Les Rippl-Ronaï d'une collection privée", Paris, Institut Hongrois, exhibition from April 5 to May 2, 2005. Like every painter, the nude is an artistic genre that Rippl-Rónai studied, worked on and executed. Here, the painter creates a composition in which five female nudes enliven the studio space of Villa Róma, a property he acquired in 1908. The nude figures are surrounded by the painter's furniture, including the table, the folding screen and the red, three-backed sofa seen in other compositions. One is combing her hair in front of the mirror, while her neighbor is undressing under the gaze of the third. The woman on the left listens to her friend play guitar. The repetition of the motif is a leitmotif typical of the 1910s in the painter's work. The many of the artist's paintings visible in the composition support this cadence. The recurrence of the motif creates the decorative and dynamic rhythm that drives the harmony of the composition. This work is one of Rippl-Rónai's finest examples of a nude scene, revealing once again his talents as a colorist and builder of space. Rippl-Rónai regularly used photography to create his work. The József Rippl-Rónai bequest includes four photographs of a nude back, possibly representing the artist's wife Lazarine. The painter also had photographs of Fenella Lowell, a young model he met in Paris in 1910, who lived at Villa Róma from September 8, 1910, until spring 1912. The female figures in this composition are all of the same physical build, and are repetitions of the same model. The nude figure here is impersonal and therefore universal, the painter having made no attempt to detail the face. However, it is possible to assume that these five female figures were inspired by Fenella Lowell. The latter, a musician, had already been drawn by the painter playing her instrument and appears, holding her guitar, in a photograph by Olga Máté, guitar in hand (Fenella playing guitar, 1911, Hungarian National Gallery). This painting can be compared with the famous painting entitled "Jeunes filles s'habillant" ("Young girls dressing"), painted around the same period and kept at the Hungarian National Gallery (Magyar Nemzeti Galéria), under inventory number FK5929, or the painting "Femme se coiffant" ("Woman combing her hair") reproduced on p. 162 under no. 71 of the exhibition catalog "József Rippl-Rónai Le Nabi hongrois" ("József Rippl-Rónai The Hungarian Nabi"), held at the Musée Maurice Denis in Saint-Germain-en-Laye from November 14, 1998 to January 24, 1999. Bids for this lot are subject to prior registration with a deposit of 10% of the maximum bid basket desired. Deposit on : https://www.debaecque.fr/caution-en-ligne