Leo was the first Stein sibling to go to Paris, in 1903, after a few years living in Florence, Italy. There he had visited another American ex-pat — Charles Loeser, who was one of Cézanne’s first and most prolific collectors. The visit was fateful.
The show’s first room lays out Leo’s initial collecting interests, including five Cézanne paintings and lithographs. Among them is his beloved little still life of five apples, plus a primitive scene of six bathers in a pastoral landscape — which belonged not to Leo but to Loeser.
The Cézanne painting of naked bathers is a subtle bud, which soon blossoms. Amid modest works by Manet, Bonnard and Toulouse-Lautrec is a voluptuous 1875 Renoir nude, sunlight sparkling through foliage to dapple her fleshy torso. Nearby hangs Felix Vallotton’s sleek, 1904 pastiche of Manet’s shocking prostitute-on-display, “Olympia,” which upset the French Academy 40 years before. The Vallotton simplifies her reclining nude body into flattened areas of hard-edge color, while her dark-haired head is haloed by a bright, brushy yellow pillow.
See the full article from “Los Angeles Times”
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