雷诺阿作品《沐浴之前》高清图片

作品简介

1875年，当雷诺阿在巴黎的一场拍卖会上首次公开展出这幅作品时，其赤裸的自然主义令观众震惊。与欧洲绘画传统中梦幻的希腊女神或神话人物截然不同，雷诺阿呈现的只是一位普通法国女子身处闺房的真实场景——腋下毛发依稀可见，凌乱的床褥随意堆砌在背景中。

When Renoir first exhibited this painting publicly, at an 1875 auction in Paris, audiences were shocked by its naturalism. Rather than depicting a dreamy Greek goddess or another figure from mythology, as had been the tradition in European painting, Renoir gives us an ordinary Frenchwoman in her bedroom, with hair under her arms and rumpled bedclothes in the background.

《沐浴之前》是雷诺阿在1875年3月23日至24日德鲁奥酒店那场轰动性拍卖会上推出的19幅作品之一。这场由杜兰德-吕埃尔画廊组织的拍卖，汇集了雷诺阿、莫奈、莫里索与西斯莱的新作，展出的画作引发如此激烈的争议，以至于现场观众几乎爆发冲突。正如保罗·杜兰德-吕埃尔多年后回忆："拍卖会引发了难以置信的骚乱。在预展和拍卖当天，(我们)不得不呼叫警察防止口角升级为斗殴。被少数支持者激怒的群众试图阻挠拍卖，每次举牌都引发阵阵嘘声。"很难想象《沐浴之前》这般含蓄的画作曾引发拳脚相向——初看之下，它远不及《阳光下的裸女》(奥赛博物馆藏)等作品激进：后者因大胆用色与肌肤上跳动的光斑在1876年印象派展览掀起轩然大波。而此刻在室内场景中，雷诺阿聚焦于身体本体而非光影游戏。画中呈现的是私密时刻：女子正褪衣准备沐浴，浅景深与近景构图强化了亲昵感。她高举的双臂在脸庞周围构筑完美的三角框架，面容沉静。色调相对克制，躯干造型坚实，微妙的色调渐变塑造出浑圆体块，尤其在手臂与乳房下部。其雕塑般的形体与滑落的衣衫，令人联想到米洛的维纳斯等古典雕塑。

或许正是这种古典框架与日常细节的叠加触怒了观众：蓬松的乱发，背景中隐约可见的皱褶床单，抬起的手臂显露的腋毛——这个1875年观众难以接受的细节——以及虽动人却未经理想化的面部特征：她太像一位普通的巴黎女子了。评论家泰奥多尔·迪雷曾盛赞雷诺阿裸体画的这一特质："他未曾仰望那些完美诠释人性之美的典范，而是凝视寻常生灵，他的女性形象随处可见，未经刻意筛选。"正是迪雷通过亨利·赫克特在1875年以区区140法郎购得此画。但迪雷的欣赏实属异数——对多数观众而言，这幅画必定呈现了现实与理想的诡异混淆。

尽管画面带有闯入女性私密空间的窥视感，我们清楚知道这是雷诺阿在圣乔治街公寓画室的布置。背景的印花墙纸也出现在《让娜·杜兰德-吕埃尔肖像》(编号BF950)中。模特可能是常为雷诺阿担任模特的亨利埃特·亨利奥——参见《巴黎女子》(威尔士国家博物馆藏)。虽然画中发色深于亨利奥标志性的红发，但其面部特征尤其是鼻唇轮廓与《巴黎女子》惊人相似。

当《沐浴之前》1912年亮相杜兰德-吕埃尔纽约画廊的展览时，已成为雷诺阿最负盛名的作品之一。评论家奥克塔夫·米尔博早先盛赞其"强有力的素描"，称其为"现代绘画的巅峰之作"。1894年从迪雷处购回此画的杜兰德-吕埃尔，对其数十年间价值飙升惊叹不已。巴恩斯曾多次赴纽约观看1912年展览，尤其被此画震撼。询价时却收到杜兰德-吕埃尔之子的婉拒信。数周后的1912年4月，巴恩斯终将画作收入囊中，令美国评论界欢欣鼓舞。詹姆斯·亨尼克在《纽约太阳报》狂热称赞其"珠光般莹润的肌肤色调与绝妙造型"，并欣慰写道："幸而这幅杰作现已归藏距纽约仅数小时车程的美国私人收藏。"

Before the Bath _is one of 19 paintings Renoir offered for sale in a scandalous public auction at Hotel Drouot on March 23–24, 1875. Organized by Galerie Durand-Ruel, the auction included new works by Renoir, Monet, Morisot, and Sisley; so controversial were the canvases on view that the public became almost violent. As Paul Durand-Ruel recalled years later, the sale "provoked incredible scenes. The day of the viewing and during the sale, [we] had to call the police in order to prevent small altercations from degenerating into full-fledged battles. The public, incensed by the rare supporters, wanted to stop the sale and howled at each bid." It is hard to imagine that a subtle painting like _Before the Bath at one time provoked fistfights. At first glance, it has little of the radicalism of a work such as Study, Nude in Sunlight (Musée d'Orsay), another half-length nude that would cause uproars at the 1876 impressionist exhibition for its bold colors and disruptive splotches of sunlight playing across the flesh. Here, indoors, Renoir's focus is on the body itself rather than on the play of light across it. The moment presented is a private one: the figure undresses for bathing, the shallow space and up-close focus adding to the feeling of intimacy. Her raised arms form a perfect triangular frame around her face, which wears a serene expression. The palette is fairly subdued and the modeling of the figure's torso is strong, with subtle tonal modulations producing rounded forms, especially in the arms and under the breasts. With her sculpted forms and falling garment, she evokes such classical sculpture as the Venus de Milo. This evocation may be precisely what offended about the picture. For superimposed onto this classical frame are signs of the everyday. The hair is unkempt, and rumpled bedcovers can be glimpsed in the background. The raised arms reveal hair in the armpits—a detail which audiences in 1875 were not accustomed to seeing—and the facial features, while attractive, are not idealized: she looks too much like an ordinary Parisian woman. Theodore Duret wrote admiringly about this aspect of Renoir's nudes: "Instead of looking up to beings which represented human nature as perfectly beautiful, he was looking at ordinary creatures, his women were such as one could meet anywhere, he had made no selection." Indeed, it was Duret who had purchased the painting at the 1875 sale, through Henri Hecht, for the small sum of 140 francs. Yet Duret's enthusiasm was hardly typical; for most viewers the painting must have seemed a strange confusion of the real and the ideal. While the painting has the voyeuristic feel of having entered into this woman's private space, we know very well that Renoir set up this scenario in his studio. The patterned wallpaper in the background is from his apartment in the rue Saint-Georges, and can be seen also in the portrait of Jeanne Durand-Ruel (BF950). The model is possibly Henriette Henriot, who posed for so many of Renoir's pictures around this time; see Parisienne (National Museum Wales). Though the hair on this model is darker than the notorious red mane seen in other representations of Henriot, the face, especially the nose and mouth, is strikingly similar to her appearance in Parisienne. By the time Before the Bath was featured in a 1912 exhibition in Durand-Ruel's New York gallery, it was one of Renoir's most celebrated works. Critics such as Octave Mirbeau had earlier praised its "strong drawing," calling it "one of the best pieces of modern painting." Durand-Ruel, who had purchased the painting at the Duret sale in 1894, marveled over the increase in its value over the course of a few decades. Barnes went several times to New York to see the Renoirs in the 1912 exhibition. Struck by this picture in particular, he inquired about its price, only to be told in a letter from one of the Durand-Ruel sons that it was not for sale. Barnes succeeded in securing the picture a few weeks later, in April 1912, much to the delight of American critics such as James Huneker, who raved about its "glowing, nacreous flesh tones [and] its admirable modeling" in the New York Sun. "Luckily," he continued, "the canvas is now in the collection of an American not many hours from New York."