Lot n° 362
Estimation :
3000 - 4000
EUR
Alfred Roll (1846-1919)
Study of a female... - Lot 362 - Coutau-Bégarie
Alfred Roll (1846-1919)
Study of a female nude for "Woman and Bull
About 1885
Black pastel and white chalk on cream paper
45 x 42,5 cm.
Signed lower right: Roll
On the back, annotation in ink, circa 1900: Cabinet de
M. Roger-Milès/6, rue Clauzel
Provenance:
- Léon Roger, known as Léon Roger-Milès (1859-1928), art critic, Paris.
Our drawing is a study that will most certainly serve as the basis for one of the artist's masterpieces: "Study" (best known by its later title "Woman and Bull"), presented by the painter at the Salon of 1885, and which is now one of the masterpieces in the collection of nineteenth century paintings of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires (oil on canvas).
Artes de Buenos Aires (oil on canvas, 241 x 277 cm., inv. 2671).
The initial title "Study" suggests the posture of an artist who wishes to separate his painting from a systematic affiliation with great historical or mythological themes, where the critic Octave Mirbeau spontaneously commented on the work under the title "Pasiphae".
Everything is nature in this painting: sunlight, wild vegetation, naked animals and humans, skin against hair.
The image, combining feminine sensuality and animal power, will be commented on sympathetically by Paul Mantz: "The story is the simplest in the world : a naked girl is walking in a meadow; she meets a bull who has time to waste and she says a few friendly words to him. Standing and leaning against the charmed beast whose wet muzzle she caresses, she has her feet half hidden by the high rising grass; the leaves of the nearby trees project on her luminous sides the trembling of their light shadows; she has run, she has on her cheeks pinkish sweat, and she laughs.
It is not the wife of Minos, who had other preoccupations, we must only look for youth, sunshine and painting in this scene, a painting which, without being perfect, is interesting and new." (Le Temps, May 10, 1885).
The painting, then exhibited at the World's Fair, was acquired by Paul Durand-Ruel, then sold by him to the Argentine collector
Aristóbulo del Valle for the sum of 12,000 francs.
Finally, it should be noted that this study was part of the collection of Léon Roger-
Milès, friend of Alfred Roll, to whom he dedicated a monograph in 1904 (Paris, A. Lahure).
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