Apples with a screen in the background

In 1907, Bourdelle took a photograph of the plaster of a work entitled Apples, placed on a plinth in front of a screen decorated with a bucolic landscape. The composition, which is particularly original, plays on theatrical effects and trompe-l'œil, superimposing the microscopic on the macroscopic. This nude woman, set in a landscape, is adorned with new meaning: is she a bather, in the manner of Cézanne? Or a modern bacchante? By using materials in unexpected ways and taking a new approach to scale, this arrangement stuns the viewer with its fictitious play on space in the manner of a 19th century diorama.

Colin Lemoine