Lucien SIMON (1861-1945) "Bain en Bretagne" or... Lot 326

Lucien SIMON (1861-1945) "Bain en Bretagne" or "Partie de Bain en pays Bigouden" circa 1909, Watercolor and gouache on paper mounted on canvas signed lower right, 147 x 104 cm Bibliography: Léonce Bénédite, "Lucien Simon aquarelliste", Art et Décoration, September 1909. André Cariou, Lucien Simon, Plomelin, Editions Palantines, 2002, reproduction page 123. Exhibitions : Paries, Galerie Georges Petit, Exposition de la Société nouvelle de peintres et sculpteurs. Quimper, Musée des beaux-arts, Lucien Simon, 2006, no. 67. Saint-Briac, Couvent et chapelle de la Sagesse, Lucien Simon, les plaisirs et les jours, 2011, illustrated on p.32 of the catalog. Provenance: Private collection. Sale by Mes Thierry, Martin et Lannon, Douarnenez, July 23, 1988, lot 50 bis. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "This unlikely theme - Bigoudènes bathing naked on the banks of a creek on the Odet - probably predates the 1909 work. In 1893, Lucien Simon, vacationing in Bénodet since his marriage to Jeanne Dauchez in 1890, was visited by his friend Émile-René Ménard. Seduced by the wooded shores of the Odet, Ménard imagined two women bathing naked in the Kergos cove near the Dauchez family villa. For him, this peaceful landscape becomes a kind of Arcadia, where he attempts to exalt the harmony between these two women and nature (L'Anse de Kergos, former collection of Edward Aleksander Raczynski, Château de Rogalin). Probably shortly afterwards, Lucien Simon painted a Nymphe des bois (former collection of Francesco Llobet, Buenos Aires), showing a partially nude young woman on the banks of a river that could be the Odet. He was then looking for subjects, between L'embarquement de saint Gallonec (private collection) and Jésus guérissant des malades (Jesus healing the sick), which he set on the beach at Bénodet. Whatever the subject, Simon always drew on the solid training he had received. The nude is one of them, and it's not surprising that he invented the theme of the Bigouden bath to draw several nude women. Is there an anecdotal reason for this choice? As usual for his ambitious compositions, Simon works from small painted sketches and drawings, through large gouaches to large paintings for the annual Salon. Painted replicas in various formats may follow. Simon sets his scene on a corner of the riverbank, probably the Odet or one of its coves, dominated by the trunks of majestic pine trees. In the various versions, he plays on the inclination of the trunks and the arrangement of the trees in the background. In another version (former Francisco Llobet collection, Buenos Aires National Museum of Fine Arts), he replaces the trunks with a cliff face. The versions differ in the number of figures - three, five or six - and their arrangement. Each figure is clearly identified by the painter, who gives them a precise place. The attitudes of each figure reveal the painter's skilful work in the studio, based on models. On the right, a young woman who has kept her clothes on and is sheltering under an umbrella observes her bathing companion. Further down, a young woman is getting dressed. Then, at the water's edge, another washes her feet. Beside her, a seated Bigoudène sports ribbons and a flashy red skirt. The bather in the middle seems to be looking at the intruder observing the group, in this case the painter. All this is masterfully constructed to animate the group, based on large gouache watercolors such as the one in Auguste Rodin's collection (Paris, Musée Rodin) featuring three figures. The large painted version exhibited at the 1910 Salon (Paris, Musée d'Orsay) features this simplified arrangement. The large watercolor and gouache drawing showing the five figures was not followed by a painting. It's clear that the painter took great pleasure in this work, using a technique in which he excelled, as evidenced by his famous drawings of Bigoudènes and Bigoudens. Auguste Dupouy, another devotee of the Bigouden region, wrote of Le Bain acquis par l'État (La peinture en Bretagne aux XIXe et XXe siècles, 1944, Librairie générale J. Philou, Rennes): "There is also a painting by him in Luxembourg entitled Baigneuses, where three Bigouden Graces, recognizable only by their headdresses, which they have kept, like some others by our great sculptor Quillivic, are dressed only in their youth, which is buxom. As I told him how astonished I was at this disrobing, which was not customary for Breton women, he confided in me that of the three, only the one who had posed from the front had been able to do so.