Tamara de Lempicka was born into a wealthy family in Warsaw and spent her adolescence in Russia and Switzerland. Against the backdrop of the turmoil of the Russian Revolution, she moved to Paris, where in 1920 she enrolled at the Académie Ranson, a private art school founded by artists of the Nabis group and studied under Maurice Denis (1870–1943). She subsequently attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, a private art school established in 1904 with a strong emphasis on life drawing, where she was taught by André Lhote (1885–1962), who was instrumental in the theorization and pedagogy of Cubism. Under Lhote’s guidance, Lempicka’s exposure to Cubist methods of geometrically constructing form had a profound impact on her artistic expression.
　
　As early as 1922, she participated in various Parisian salons, in particular the Salon d’Automne and the Tuileries Salon. From the outset, she focused primarily on the human figure, depicting her subjects pressed tightly into the pictorial space. Characterized by firmly modeled bodies, powerful limbs, and small, well-proportioned breasts, her expression simultaneously encompasses sensuous, elegant femininity and a Cubist-derived geometric sense of structure, gradually establishing her distinctive style.

　In 1925, a solo exhibition at the Bottega di Poesia, Milan, marked a major turning point in Lempicka’s career. The gallery director, Count Emanuele di Castelbarco―himself active as a painter, poet, publisher, and patron of the arts―recognized her talent and introduced her to Milan’s art and social circles, frequented by aristocrats, musicians, and artists. This led to a succession of portrait commissions. In 1927, she also met Dr. Pierre Boucard in Paris, a physician who had made a fortune in the pharmaceutical industry and produced portraits of his family. Building on these successes, Lempicka reached the height of her career between approximately 1928 and 1930.

　Étude pour Femmes au bain is a study for Femmes au bain (fig. 1), which depicts a group of women bathing and was executed around 1929, during Tamara de Lempicka’s so-called golden period. The composition reveals the influence of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867), whom André Lhote greatly admired, and evokes Ingres’s late masterpiece The Turkish Bath (Le Bain turc) (fig. 2). Ingres’s celebrated arrangement of multiple nude figures placed in intimate proximity likely served as an important point of reference for Lempicka in addressing multi-figure compositions and varied poses. Within Lempicka’s oeuvre, which is predominantly centered on single nude figures or individual portraits, a composition featuring as many as seven nude women is exceptionally rare. Condensing her Cubist-derived geometric sensibility with depictions of women endowed with sensuality and powerful vitality, this work offers a compelling demonstration of the distinctive appeal of Lempicka’s art.

Bibliography :
Alain Blondel, Tamara de Lempicka: Catalogue Raisonné 1921–1979,
Lausanne, Acatos, 1999



Lot.038 Tamara DE LEMPICKA
Étude pour Femmes au bain
Oil on panel
60.0 × 92.0 cm (23⅝ × 36¼ in.)
JPY 50,000,000 - 80,000,000
USD 320,500 - 512,800

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