This female nude study relates to Jean Dupas’s grand decorative cycle La Gloire de Bordeaux, painted in 1937 for the apse of the conference hall at the Bourse du Travail in Bordeaux. The monumental composition, still in situ today, celebrates the city’s vitality and prosperity through allegorical figures representing the river Garonne, and various Olympic gods such as Neptune, Bacchus and Ceres, as well as several Muses of the Arts, all surrounding the city’s coat of arms.
Likely depicting the Allegory of Tragedy, as a nod to the city’s important contribution to French theater, the present drawing exemplifies Dupas’s refined synthesis of classical tradition and modern form. A leading exponent of modern classicism, Dupas here combines the precision of an Ingresque line with elongated proportions, a subtle cubist stylization through the mastery use of charcoal, which is characteristic of his mature style. The figure’s sculptural modeling and sensual contours only reveal his exceptional draughtsmanship, which shouldn’t come as a surprise for an artist who won the famous Grand Prix de Rome in 1910, allowing him to study the work of many Renaissance masters, especially Michelangelo, in Rome.
Dupas achieved national and international renown through major decorative commissions, from the Tour des Vins de France at the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs to the celebrated Art Deco interiors of the ocean liner Normandie. With the Bourse du Travail project—commissioned by Bordeaux’s visionary mayor Adrien Marquet—Dupas affirmed both his artistic stature and the civic ambition of a city eager to combine beauty with progress.