Cléopâtre Sévastos with her Feet in Water (Cléopâtre Sévastos les pieds dans l'eau à Marseille)

In November 1906, Cléopâtre Sévastos accompanied Bourdelle and his wife to the Colonial Exhibition in Marseille. This photograph, taken on Prophet’s Beach, is not so much a stolen moment as a posed image in which the master asks his young student, or rather his new muse, to provide material for inspiration; to give substance to the sculptor's vision. Has Cleopatra remembered “Aphrodite in the bath”, a favourite subject of Hellenistic artists, often used by Roman copyists to decorate gardens and baths? Or has she obediently followed a suggestion from Bourdelle himself?  In this photograph, the fruit of an undeniable complicity, we can easily glimpse the sculptural transposition to the Crouching Bather (1906-1907), whom Bourdelle depicted without any clothes.

Jérôme Godeau