Gaston La Touche

Purchased from the artist by Robert C. Hall, Pittsburgh, by 1907 (as recorded in the artist's account books);

University Club, Pittsburgh;

By whom sold, Pittsburgh, Constantine & Mayer, 20 November 2004;

Where purchased by a private collector;

By whom sold, New York, Sotheby's, 7 May 2015, lot 51;

Purchased by the present owner after the above sale.

Pittsburgh, The Carnegie Institute, 11th Annual Exhibition, 11 April – 13 June 1907, no. 265 (awarded the Medal of the First Class);

Paris, Galeries Georges Petit, Catalogue des œuvres de Gaston La Touche, 11 June – 13 July 1908, no. 206;

Brussels, Galeries des Artistes Français, Gaston Latouche, 21 December – 13 January 1929, no. 17;

Dallas, Museum of Fine Arts, Texas Centennial Exposition, 1936.

11th Annual Exhibition, exh. cat., Pittsburgh 1907, n.p., no. 265 (as The Bath);

H. Frantz, Gaston La Touche 1854–1913, London 1914, p. 18;

S. Baring MacLennan, Gaston La Touche, A Painter of Belle Époque Dreams, Woodbridge 2009, p. 195.

Gaston La Touche’s Le Bain (La Chaste Suzanne) exemplifies the artist’s unique synthesis of Symbolism and Impressionism. A leading colourist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, La Touche was closely associated with Manet and the Impressionists, yet he pursued an independent path in both technique and subject matter. In Le Bain, he transforms a moment of quiet intimacy into a scene of idyllic reverie, where myth and modernity meet beneath the shimmering light of a Norman summer’s day.

La Touche’s brushwork—loose, luminous, and atmospheric—reveals his Impressionist training, while his subject matter evokes Symbolist and Rococo sensibilities. The painting’s harmonies of green and blue capture the scintillating reflections of water and foliage, infusing the composition with a dreamlike radiance. Under a verdant chestnut tree, the statuesque bather dries herself, her white drapery billowing like a vision of purity. Around her, swans glide, fountains trickle, and putti-like sculptures preside: a world of bucolic bliss reminiscent of Fragonard’s fêtes galantes, while the treatment of the female nude recalls the softly contoured bathers of Degas.

La Touche’s connection to Normandy is central to his art. Selina Baring MacLennan notes the importance of Champsecret in La Touche’s oeuvre, “It was here at Champsecret, on the edge of the forest, that La Touche became fascinated by the people of the countryside with their tales and legends.” (Selina Baring MacLennan, Gaston La Touche, A Painter of Belle Époque Dreams, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2009, p.10) His Normandy home, Gros Doibt, inscribed on the painting, served as both a retreat and a source of inspiration. It was in this pastoral setting that his fascination with rural legend and natural beauty flourished. Le Bain thus channels both the artist’s rural imagination and his modern sensibility. As critic Gustav Kobbe remarked, “The real merit of an artist is to be himself… and so La Touche, while adoring his masters, remained a man and a painter of today.” (Gustav Kobbe, “Brilliant Work of Gaston La Touche” in The Herald, August 1913, pp. 116-17)