Gustave-Adolphe MOSSA (1883-1971) - Lot 155

Gustave-Adolphe MOSSA (1883-1971) La Chaste Suzanne, 1904 Watercolor, ink (pen and wash) and gold paint, signed, dated and localized "Gustav Adolf Mossa, Viciensis Pinxit MCMIV" [painted in Vicenza] lower right and titled in the lower-left margin. Minor foxing 20.5 x 38 cm Bibliography -Jean-François-Louis Merlet, Nomenclature des aquarelles et tableaux de l'œuvre de Gustav Adolf Mossa, Nice, L'Éclaireur, January 1905, page 22 (n°11), quoted on page 10 under the title Suzanne au bain -Louis Capatti, Alexis et Gustave-Adolphe Mossa peintres niçois, Nice, 1945, quoted on page 38 and titled Suzanne au bain -Jean-Roger Soubiran, Les Aquarelles symbolistes et la création plastique symboliste de Gustav Adolf Mossa, Thèse en histoire de l'art soutenue à l'Université Aix-en-Provence - Marseille, 1978 n°4 page 430 -Collectif, Gustav Adolf Mossa, Catalogue raisonné des œuvres " symbolistes ", Paris, Somogy Éditions d'art, Nice, Association Symbolique Mossa, 2010, our watercolor is described under reference A59 Exhibition: Nice, hall de l'Éclaireur de Nice, Gustav-Adolf Mossa, January 31-February 5, 1905, no. 11 Provenance: The watercolor was sold during Mossa's lifetime to Gaudence Bistesi, on December 20, 1936; he later offered it to his son, before our work was deemed, by the authors of the catalog raisonné, to have been destroyed on August 18, 1944 in the fire at the Villa Bisteti in Nice, which explains its absence from the reference work. After the war, it was in the collection of Doctor A., still in Nice, from whom it has come down to us by descent. The work is accompanied by a certificate of provenance issued by The Art Loss Register. This extraordinary watercolor, particularly well dated, has never been seen before, having been kept by the same family for 80 years, even though it was considered destroyed. A disconcerting interpretation of the classic biblical theme of Chaste Susanna or Susanna and the Elders, or even Susanna at the Bath, this watercolor is a demonstration of Mossa's symbolist irreverence, endowed with a fantastic anticlerical eroticism, served by a graphic power not devoid of humor (the sponge). Mossa treated the theme a second time, in 1906, in the form of a triptych. In all, we owe him less than four hundred symbolist watercolors.