La Toilette

1870
Huile sur toile
132 x 127 cm - 51 1/4 x 50 1/2 in.
Signé et daté en bas à gauche : F. Bazille, 1870
Montpellier, Musée Fabre, France - Inv. 18.1.2
Dernière mise à jour : 2022-04-03 06:23:42
Référence : MSb-59

Until now, the nude had given rise in Bazille only to purely traditional representations. Here, it is a matter of placing the nude in a new perspective.

On a comfortable couch, covered with soft, light-colored fur, sits a naked young woman, her long hair hanging over her left shoulder and breast. She rests her left arm on the fur and her right on the shoulder of a black woman. The latter, a servant, is crouching next to the young woman and passing a mule to her right foot. To the right, another maid, standing, looks intently at the scene and holds a large black shawl decorated with red and blue flowers.

The square format of the painting - found in the Summer Scene and the Fisherman with a Net - allowed Bazille to make this layout where each character plays a specific role.

In the center, then, the naked woman towards whom all eyes converge: she is a young woman of "nonchalant beauty", a "young Esther served by two slaves who hurry around her..." [Gillet, 1935, p. 242]. The young woman seems to be staring into the distance, as if she is not aware of what is happening around her. There is a real voluptuousness in the pause, a voluptuousness that is reinforced in the décor by the presence of the fur bedspread, the warm and multicolored fabrics on the wall and the clothes of the servants. The long hair, untied, reveals a young and full bosom, and gives a certain sensuality to the position of the young woman. Even the sheet, by a deliberate transparency, does not completely hide the right leg that it is supposed to cover. The body of the young woman is generally well drawn. Only the left arm and hand are too long, relatively deformed. On the other hand, the right hand, which rests on the shoulder of the maid, is correct. Poulain analyzes the graphic design of the central figure as follows: "It seems that the usual graphic energy of the painter has been deliberately exempted from any harshness and that he has sought to make the central figure, softly drawn, an object of tender meditation. This softness of line, more abandoned than usual, gives this body a very Nordic pallor" [Poulain, 1932, p. 175]. It is true that the body is softly drawn, all in curves underlined by studious circles. When Paul Valéry visited the Fabre Museum, he stopped in front of La Toilette and, according to Poulain, made this reflection: "It is a pity that the naked body of this woman is made of rubber because the other figures are admirably painted" [Poulain, Itinéraires, Nov. 1942]. The remark is pertinent because the skin lacks relief and truth. The young woman's body is as if transparent, by a flaw from which the Summer Scene and the Fisherman with a Net.

The depiction of the maid on the left is consistent with reality. Few graphic errors; accuracy of coloring, except, perhaps, in the slightly too dark face of the black girl. On the right, finally, another servant, standing this time, slightly bent forward and turned towards the young naked woman. She looks very much like Renoir's model Lise. Cooper writes that he is "absolutely certain of the character's identity". [Cooper, Burlington Magazine, May 1959]. Moreover, he takes up an idea of Sarraute's who, in her 1948 catalogue, saw in the maid of Bazille's painting the model who appears in Renoir's La Baigneuse au griffon, a painting received at the 1870 Salon.

Even if one agrees that the characters are, on the whole, the main attraction of La Toilette, some details should not be overlooked. The fur is finely rendered: Bazille combines various colors, black, gray, orange. Here he details familiar objects as Romane-Musculus remarks [Romane-Musculus, Réforme, June 24, 1950, p. 5]. The point is also made, moreover, by Wildenstein when he writes that Bazille "does not hesitate to create diverse centers of interest by giving too much brilliance, an exaggerated care to the detail of a costume, to a corner of a landscape" [Wildenstein, Arts, June 9, 1950, p. 8]. In La Toilette, he continues, "the clothes of the woman on the right or the Negress distract the eye from the central nude. These brilliant colors certainly take away its exclusive interest from this graceful female body". What applies to the clothes also applies to the other familiar elements or objects in the painting. We have mentioned the fur, but there is also the hanging on the wall, a hanging that does not exist in the preparatory drawing. It is interesting to note that the head of the naked young woman is placed exactly in the center of one of its rectangular patterns.

Other details that should be noted are the finely painted mules, the embroidered cloth at the feet of the right handmaid and the loincloth of the negress, and the pretty striped dress of the other handmaid. All this is part of the detail that counterbalances the mediocrity of the young woman. Daulte is quick to point out that "La Toilette...is not a success", and that "the young woman's body lacks firmness, and has not the quiver of life. Her attitude has something restrained and stilted" [Daulte, 1992, p. 121]. Certainly, as we have seen, the young woman leaves something to be desired, but La Toilette is a work to be considered more as a whole than in the details that accumulate in it, even if the latter play a not insignificant role.

Many comparisons are necessary with ancient or modern works and, first of all, with Véronese's Mystical Marriage of St. Catherine, where the attitude of the woman crouching in the foreground and shoeing her mistress inevitably comes to mind when one looks at the black woman in La Toilette. In addition, we will point out, without being exhaustive, Tintoretto's Suzanne au bain, La Convalescente by Évariste de Valernes [Exhibited at the 1868 Salon] - where the main character, lying on a bed, wears a striped nightgown reminiscent of the one worn by the maid on the right in our painting - and La Toilette de la mariée by Courbet [1859]. We will not forget, either, Delacroix's Femmes d'Alger that belonged to Alfred Bruyas.

But, because they are closer to Bazille, it is naturally with Renoir and Manet that we must look for the most interesting similarities.

In Renoir, first, with the Odalisque, with Femmes d'Alger [1870] and with the Parisiennes habillées en Algériennes [1872]. From these two works, however, juts out a more voluptuous impression than from Bazille's painting. In the Odalisque, for example, the woman looks at us with a provocative air, an impression absent in La Toilette. These subjects, in Delacroix as in Renoir, are borrowed from the Orient, very much in vogue at the time. But, in Bazille, is this really an authentic inspiration? "The presence of a black maid wearing a red madras, the colourful fabric with which she drapes her hips, the shawl of her mistress or the arabesque wall hanging that serves as a background to the scene, are not a true evocation of the Orient", writes Daulte [Daulte, 1992, p. 121]. And even if the scene is reminiscent of the Orient, it gives off only a "discreet perfume of Orientalism" [Claparède, Réforme, June 24, 1950, p. 5], Claparède tells us for his part, who is therefore quite reserved about this influence and filiation.

Finally, it is appropriate to bring La Toilette closer to Manet's Olympia. Without going back over the history of this work, let us specify that, painted in 1863, it was exhibited at the Salon of 1865; the scandal it caused there was "revived by the 1867 exhibition organized by Manet at the time of the Exposition Universelle" Exhibition catalogue, Manet, Paris, 1983, p. 176]. It was certainly at the 1865 Salon that Bazille discovered the Olympia. How, moreover, could he not have heard of it?

The differences are noticeable between Manet's painting and Bazille's. As Prinçay says, "Bazille does not have the sovereign ease of his elder"; and, further on, he adds, "The body of the reclining woman in La Toilette... borrows from the Olympia only the boldness of being there, and the contrast of a negress" [Prinçay, 1947, p. 869]. The comparison, in fact, ends there, for the two works are as different in treatment and effect as they are close in subject. The nude woman does not have in Bazille the presence of the one in the Olympia in whose insistent gaze we continue to perceive the challenge that Manet wanted to launch. On the contrary, the young woman in La Toilette is marked by a shyness, a restraint that we can attribute to the painter's Protestant upbringing, to his modesty and reserve. Manet does not have this same conflict with himself. Provocative, the gaze of the woman in the Olympia is undeniably so, as is that falsely modest gesture of the left hand hiding her sex. Bazille is more discreet, more chaste, and in his painting the young woman's body is partly hidden by a large sheet that does not fail to bring to mind the way the old masters covered the bodies of their nudes.

La Toilettedoes not have its origin in literature like Manet's Olympia where the presence of the Fleurs du mal is underlying. It is everything that the Olympia is not, but the difference between the two paintings reveals, despite the oppositions, Manet's influence on Bazille, who wanted to take into account contemporary reality without, however, achieving the realism of Manet's painting.

Bazille, as we can see, thus sacrifices to the fashion of his time, but his characters seem more like extras than actors. The pause, the pure and simple juxtaposition of elements, the frozen scene, the static bodies, everything indicates here that we are dealing with a studio painting.

Bazille cannot be reproached for his lack of delicacy or a mistaken view of reality. This does not prevent Marandel from seeing in La Toilette a less "convincing" work than The Family Gathering, the Summer Scene or the Fisherman with a Net. One does not find in La Toilette, he says in substance, the strength and energy of The Family Gathering  [Marandel, 1978, No. 54]. It is true that the touch is wise and the contrasts are calculated but shy.

Bazille already had his project in mind when he wrote to his parents at the end of 1869: "I have set to work, I am doing 1° the interior of my studio, 2° the portrait of Blau and 3° a nude woman for the salon. I have enough for the whole winter". We cannot affirm, based on this passage, that the "naked woman" referred to is the one in La Toilette. But another letter from Bazille dated mid-February 1870 provides formal proof: "There are three women in my painting and I have found three charming models, including a superb Negress." We will follow the evolution of the project for La Toilette through the preparatory drawing Study for La Toilette.

Bazille's plan is to send La Toilette to the Salon. March 20 is the deadline for submitting works. He worked ardently and La Toilette gave him satisfaction: "I am happy with my painting, for the moment; my friends are complimenting me..." So he sent it to the Salon with the Summer Scene. What followed was very surprising, for he wrote - all too quickly - to his parents on April 7 or 8, 1870: "My two paintings are received at the Salon". However, only the Summer Scene will be accepted there and another letter, from the beginning of May, allows us to glimpse the cause of his misunderstanding: "... I fear that my other painting has been refused by mistake... I strongly believe that it [La Toilette] has been forgotten".

Like other of his paintings, La Toilette appears on the walls of the Studio on the rue Condamine, just above the pink sofa. It is shown in the rough state, as it is on the preparatory drawing.

What place should be given to La Toilette? This work is in fact neither avant-garde nor classical in the integralist sense of that term. It actually evokes Bazille's duality. "La Toilette... seems to lead us from the lesson of Delacroix to modernity," says Henri Focillon [Focillon, 1928, p. 212]. While remaining faithful to the past through his wisdom, moderation, and restraint, Bazille here shows  his belonging to what makes up the contestation of the moment; but, for lack of audacity, he fails to join Manet of the Olympia.