Bathers

Henry OTTMANN (1877-1927) Les Baigneuses Oil on canvas Signed lower right.   Cataloguenaire n° 496-Two naked bathers in an undergrowth near a pond circa 1912. Bears an old exhibition label on the frame "Henry OTTMANN, 1928, Monsieur MANAUT" Henri-Louis Ottmann was a student at the Académie Julian in Paris. It was in Brussels that he exhibited in 1903 for the first time, at La Libre Esthétique, three views of the Luxembourg station executed in various atmospheric conditions (Musée d'Orsay, Paris). Ottmann participated in the Salon des indépendants of 1905 in Paris, at the Salon d'Automne, at the Salon de la Société nationale des beaux-arts, and exhibited at the Salon des Tuileries in Paris. In Les Baigneuses, Ottmann draws the lesson of impressionism in particular through the bluish shadows and the decomposition of light into touches of bright colors. As we see in Auguste Renoir, whom Ottmann particularly admires, the framing is tight on the busty bodies animated by touches of color in all shades of pink, green and blue, creating a joyful and tender scene, in the sunlight filtered by the trees. His works are preserved at the Musée d'Orsay (View of the Luxembourg station in Brussels (1903) and at the National Museum of Modern Art (Woman with Blue Stockings, 1917), Sleeping Courtesan (1920), Saint-Tropez (1927) and at the Petit Palais, Paris.