Les Baigneuses

Inscriptions: Signed (lower right). Signed, titled and dated on the verso: Les Baigneuses / Meudon, 1913

Provenance: The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection

Exhibitions: Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, “Arensberg Collection,” 1949, no. 146.

Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, “Arensberg Collection,” 1954, no. 142, repro.

NYC, Guggenheim Museum, “Arensberg and Gallatin Collection,” 1961.

Sapporo, Japan, Hokkaido Modern Art Museum, “European Paintings and Sculpture from the Philadelphia Museum of Art: Towards the 20th Century,” July 18- August 23, 1992 [travelled to: Yamanashi Prefectural Museum, Kofu, Japan, September 5- October 4, 1992; Matsuzakaya Museum of Art, Nagoya, Japan, October 10, November 15, 1992].

Kyoto, Japan, Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, “Masterpieces from the Philadelphia Museum of Art: Impressionism and Modern Art,” July 14- September 24, 2007 [Traveled to Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan, October 10 – December 24, 2007], cat. 48, color illus. p. 149.

PMA (Perelman Building, First Floor Exhibition Gallery), “Henri Matisse and Modern Art on the French Riviera,” December 13, 2008-October 25, 2009, no cat.

PMA (Dorrance Galleries), “Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris,” February 24-May 2, 2010, no cat.

PMA, “Gauguin, Cezanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia”,

June 14-September 5, 2012. cat. 126, color illus., pg. 106.

Literature: Joseph J. Rishel, “Gauguin, Cezanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia”, exh. cat., (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of

Art, 2012), p. 106.

PMA, Concise Catalogue, 1994, p. 395.6

Marianne Martin, “Futurist Art and Theory,” Oxford, 1968, ill. no. 138.

H. H. Amason, “History of Modern Art,” New York, 1986, no. 246, repro.

Pierre Daix, “Le temps des revolutions,” in La Grande Histoire de la Peinture Moderne, vol. 2, Geneva, 1982, p. 69, repro.

Gleizes, Metzinger, du Cubisme et après, L’Adresse, Musée de la Poste, Paris, 9 May – 22 September 2012; and Musée de Lodève, 22 June – 3 November 2013, p. 31, reproduced.

Notes: In this work, two nudes are set against panels of strongly contrasting colors, a brilliantly lit zone with an elegant viaduct and modern railway bridge in the background, and an arching sycamore whose branches extend beyond canvas. Whereas Gleizes positioned his bathers before a landscape, Metzinger, who adopted a vertical format, subsumed his figures into their surroundings to achieve greater pictorial unity. (Source: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 11 April 2019)