RUPERT BUNNY

Smith & Singer are delighted to offer Rupert Bunny's On the Cliff (1910) for private sale.

On the Cliff, one of the most panoramic and delightful of Rupert Bunny’s paintings remaining in private ownership, has its origins in one of the many seaside summer vacations taken by the artist from the late 1880s.  In 1908 Bunny was on the Atlantic coast of south-west France, staying at the Villa Lili in Saint-Georges-de-Didonne, near Royan.  A sketchbook from that holiday (circa 1908, private collection) preserves studies and notations for a number of later paintings, including On the Beach, Royan (1908, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney), Summertime, Royan (1910, Newcastle Region Art Gallery, Newcastle), Under the Trees, Royan (1910, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth) and The Cliff Path (1910, Kerry Stokes Collection, Perth) as well as the present work.

As with the majority of Bunny’s compositions from this period, On the Cliff depicts an elegantly attired woman swathed in a catalogue of fashions, including dress, hat, shawl and shoes.  Shown seated reading on the cliff of Vallières, it is a determinedly naturalistic picture of modern life and leisure.  Contemporary critics particularly praised such works for their ‘expression of the rhythm, momentariness, dazzle of fleeting light, and shadow, and atmospheric envelopment of nature.’ On the Cliff, like several of its closely related subjects, depicts a small group of holidaymakers in separate social groups as they fossick amongst the rockpools on the shore below.  Between cliff edge and ocean, the small, distant figures are barely visible on the rocky beach covered with a carpet of seaweed.

Despite this essentially prosaic (if distinctly elegant) descriptive character, On the Cliff nevertheless retains something of the feel of the artist’s earlier symbolist work, not only in its restricted, contained and flattened topography and Puvis de Chavannesque, frieze-like composition, but also in its evocation of hidden narratives.  The solitary figure, reflective and with her gaze fixed to the horizon, together with the several figures on the beach below, offer an image brimming with atmosphere that is simultaneously enigmatic and contemplative.