Crouching Bather (Baigneuse accroupie - version à taille d'exécution, variante)

This Crouching Bather is a masterly transposition of a photograph Bourdelle took of his student Cléopâtre Sevastos with her feet in the water at a beach in Marseille. Enriched by sculptural references, the sculptor freed himself from everyday appearances, however seductive, to reach the truth of presence. Like the Cloud (1907), the sensual modelling of this nude is clearly inspired by Rodin's voluptuous lyricism, and the audacity of the pose is undoubtedly reminiscent of Rodin's creation of Iris, Messenger of the Gods (1895), exposing her intimacy. But there is another kinship: that of Cézanne, the “modern primitive” (A. Bourdelle, letter to Charles Morice) to whom the sculptor had been referring ever since Elie Faure introduced him to the “rudimentary splendour” of the Aix master's bathers, “posed like living statues”. The Cézanne lesson is undeniably perpetuated in the density of the figure, tilted to form one with the sheer mass of the rock, the breadth of the forms and the rigorous articulation of the volumes. The fullness of this Crouching Bather is also akin to the robustness of the beautiful carnal architectures painted by “Father Renoir” at the same time, the great bathers seen by Picasso and celebrated by Maurice Denis as the salutary return of the primitive harmony of Antiquity to the modern world.

Jérôme Godeau