Le pont de Passy

The present work depicts the artist and her young lover, Thankmar von Münchhausen during the summer of 1912, when she enjoyed a brief liaison with the young German student. The frontal pose of his virile, bare-chested figure in a boat on the Seine is the central focus of the painting, while the artist presents herself bobbing in the water in the lower right quadrant. This abstracted landscape scene is a fascinating autobiographical document, as the artist had just recently ended her tumultuous relationship with her lover, the poet Guillaume Appollinaire. Their five-year affair began in 1907, when they were introduced by Picasso, and over the ensuing years they greatly influenced each other's work. Their relationship was celebrated in Henri Rousseau's 1909 painting The Muse Inspiring the Poet, of which there are two versions, one at Tate Modern, London and the other at the Offtenliche Kunstsammlung, Kunstmuseum Basel. However, no longer able to forgive his infidelities, Laurencin left Appollinaire and rebounded into dalliances with the subject of the present work and the doctor Arnault Tzanck. Her relationship with Thankmar von Münchhausen would, in fact, extend beyond this liaison, as he was the cousin of Marie Laurencin's future husband, Baron Otto von Wätjen, whom she married in June 1914.