FRENCH SCULPTURE CENSUS / RÉPERTOIRE DE SCULPTURE FRANÇAISE

LIPCHITZ, Ossip/Jacques Druskieniki, Lithuania 1891 - Capri, Italy 1973

Maker: Rudier, Georges

La baigneuse The Bather 1923-1925 bronze, edition of 7, cast no. 1

statue

1 1 3 78 ?8 x 31 ?8 x 27 ?4 in. right side pedestal: J Lipchitz foundry mark on base at back: Georges Rudier Fondeur, Paris

Acc. No.: 1967.20 Credit Line: Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Algur H. Meadows and the Meadows Foundation Incorporated

Photo credit: Tom Jenkins/Image courtesy Dallas Museum of Art © Artist :

Dallas, Texas, Dallas Museum of Art www.dma.org

Provenance

1967, the artist 1967, New York, Marlborough-Gerson Galleries (intermediary between the artist and the DMA) 1967, Dallas, Mr. and Mrs. Algur H. Meadows 1967, Dallas Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Algur H. Meadows and the Meadows Foundation Incorporated Bibliography

Museum's website, 7 May 2010

1979 Bromberg Anne Bromberg, A Guide to the Collections. Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas, 1979, p. 113- 114 n. 144, repr.

1983 Bromberg Anne R. Bromberg, Dallas Museum of Art. Selected Works, Dallas, The Dallas Museum of Art, 1983, p. 137 n. 140, repr.

1996 Wilkinson Alan G. Wilkinson, The Sculpture of Jacques Lipchitz, A Catalogue raisonné, Vol. 1, The Paris Years 1910-1940, London, Thames & Hudson, 1996, p. 68 no. 169, 178, 219

1997 Dallas Dallas Museum of Art. A Guide to the Collection, Seattle, Marquand Books, 1997, p. 129, repr.

Exhibitions

1967 Dallas Dallas Private Collections, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, July 15-September 3, 1967

1974 Fort Worth Twentieth Century Art from Fort Worth and Dallas Collections, Fort Worth, Fort Worth Art Museum, September 8-October 15, 1974

1978 Dallas Dallas Collects: Impressionist and Early Modern Masters, An Exhibition Celebrating the Seventy- Fifth Anniversary of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas, Dallas Museum of Fine Ats, January 24-February 26, 1978, no. 115

1997 Madrid/Valencia Jacques Lipchitz, Madrid, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, May 20-September 9, 1997; Valencia, Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, September 18-November 30, 1997, p. 104- 105

Related works

See 1996 Wilkinson: Other bronze copies: - Cambridge, MA, MIT List Visual Art Center - Ithaca, NY, Cornell University, Herbert F. Johnston Museum of Art - Lincoln, Nebraska, Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Rudier, 2/7 - Los Angeles, UCLA, Wight Art Gallery - Pasadena, CA, Norton Simon Museum - St. Louis, St. Louis Art Museum, no foundry mark

Comment

Museum's website, 7 May 2010: Lipchitz's "Bather" combines cubist-inspired stylization and abstraction with a nod to the French classicist figural tradition that extends even to the choice of material and technique - cast bronze. The massive limbs of this figure are comparable to the geometricized and fragmented body parts in Fernand Léger's monumental odalisques. [see Dallas Museum of Art, 1982.27.FA] "The Bather" can also be situated close to Pablo Picasso's classically inspired and equally massive bathers executed in 1922. An assemblage of distinct and reductive elements, this sculpture is an interplay of concave and convex forms. The relative readability of a few important details reveals its identity as a human figure: the small round "eye," for instance, helps to articulate the face; the gentle slope of an almost horizontal line suggests a shoulder; and a slight bend in the profile of the legs connotes knees. The manner in which the legs are truncated by the bronze base suggests, uncannily, that the figure is wading through water, even holding up skirts above an aqueous surface. The artist achieves a delicate balance, then, between descriptive details and broader abstract forms. "Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection," page 129