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拍品專文
Sylvie Buisson has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
In 1913, at the age of twenty-seven, Foujita left Japan for France, where he would make the acquaintance of many artists including Pablo Picasso, Chaïm Soutine and Amedeo Modigliani, and would learn from and exchange ideas with them. In 1917 he met and fell in love with Fernande Barrey, a young painter studying in Montparnasse, who he would marry soon thereafter. It was during this time that Foujita experienced his first major professional success. Unfortunately, the stresses associated with his work caused the dissolution of his marriage to Fernande, who was soon replaced by the fair-skinned and cheerful Lucie Badoul, nicknamed “Youki” by the artist. Foujita and Youki married in 1924, and his new wife would serve as his muse and principal model for the next decade.
Painted in 1926, the present work is a beautiful example of Foujita’s first explorations of the nude motif, which he began in the early 1920s to immediate acclaim: "Foujita liked to depict nude women just as they were, without making them the subject of allegory or history. For a long time he remained particularly fond of painting nudes lying down, as can be seen, for example, in Nu allongé au chat (Buisson, no. 21.05) or Nu à la toile de Jouy (Buisson, no. 22.06). It is their simplicity, serenity, and purity of line that makes his nudes at once so lifelike and so chaste. The way the forms are modeled, with scarcely any shading and very little color, recalls the stump technique the artist used so often in his drawings. Thiébault Sisson wrote of Foujita, "It is the relief without shading of M. Ingres—with whom, indeed, Foujita seems to have as much in common as with his Japanese ancestors—a relief which is suggested, at least in its essentials, merely by the supple arabesques of the lines” (Le Temps, 1 May 1923, reproduced in J. Selz, Foujita, New York, 1981, p. 61).
In 1913, at the age of twenty-seven, Foujita left Japan for France, where he would make the acquaintance of many artists including Pablo Picasso, Chaïm Soutine and Amedeo Modigliani, and would learn from and exchange ideas with them. In 1917 he met and fell in love with Fernande Barrey, a young painter studying in Montparnasse, who he would marry soon thereafter. It was during this time that Foujita experienced his first major professional success. Unfortunately, the stresses associated with his work caused the dissolution of his marriage to Fernande, who was soon replaced by the fair-skinned and cheerful Lucie Badoul, nicknamed “Youki” by the artist. Foujita and Youki married in 1924, and his new wife would serve as his muse and principal model for the next decade.
Painted in 1926, the present work is a beautiful example of Foujita’s first explorations of the nude motif, which he began in the early 1920s to immediate acclaim: "Foujita liked to depict nude women just as they were, without making them the subject of allegory or history. For a long time he remained particularly fond of painting nudes lying down, as can be seen, for example, in Nu allongé au chat (Buisson, no. 21.05) or Nu à la toile de Jouy (Buisson, no. 22.06). It is their simplicity, serenity, and purity of line that makes his nudes at once so lifelike and so chaste. The way the forms are modeled, with scarcely any shading and very little color, recalls the stump technique the artist used so often in his drawings. Thiébault Sisson wrote of Foujita, "It is the relief without shading of M. Ingres—with whom, indeed, Foujita seems to have as much in common as with his Japanese ancestors—a relief which is suggested, at least in its essentials, merely by the supple arabesques of the lines” (Le Temps, 1 May 1923, reproduced in J. Selz, Foujita, New York, 1981, p. 61).