巴布羅.畢加索

Baigneuse au pouf rouge and the lot which follows, Deux femmes, form an extraordinary pair of works which Picasso executed in 1930, using his own etchings as his source image. Picasso created the etching in 1930, probably between September and October, in Boisgeloup. He then painted over two of these etchings with gouache, creating elegant female portraits. In the current work, he depicted a single bathing nude, strongly reminiscent of the work of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, a dominant inspiration for the artist through the 1920s.

Brigitte Baer writes of this work, "Our Baigneuse is a reinterpretation of the Baigneuse de Valpinçon painted by Ingres in 1808 (Musée du Louvre [fig. 1]), which itself was reused by the artist in his Petite baigneuse, Intérieur de harem of 1828 (Musée du Louvre), a painting that clearly stresses the theme of 'women together.' Furthermore, Picasso seems also to refer to an Ingresque technique or process. We know that Ingres had no compunction about reusing the pose of one of his models by 'flipping it over'... In a similar fashion, Picasso takes the Baigneuse de Valpinçon and 'flips her over' in order to show her frontality. The 1828 Baigneuse then enters the process, lending the red of its drapery to the cushion in the Picasso and the yellow stripes of the turban to Picasso's yellow scarf" (B. Baer, Picasso the Printmaker: Graphics from the Marina Picasso Collection, op. cit., p. 57).