In his painting ‘L’après-midi à Naples’, Paul Cézanne unites the classical myth of the bacchanal with a scene of everyday intimacy. Two reclining nudes embrace upon a bed, while a third figure offers a bowl of punch. The tightly composed group unfolds within a confined interior of heavy drapery and subdued light. The work is likely the smaller version of a painting with the same title conceived about ten years earlier, now presumed lost. Painted in 1876–77, it belongs to a small group of erotic compositions in which Cézanne responded to Édouard Manet’s scandalous ‘Olympia’.

For both artists, the interest lay not in the myth itself but in the image of the modern body as an unidealized painterly form. The figures and the subtle allusions to Baroque masters such as Rubens reveal Cézanne’s dialogue with tradition, while the luminous, transparent palette already anticipates his mature style. Influenced by Camille Pissarro, Cézanne abandoned dark tonalities and arrived at the clear, structured colour planes that would later define modern painting. The first owner of this small canvas was the Paris dealer Ambroise Vollard, who in 1895 dedicated a groundbreaking exhibition to Cézanne. It was visited by young artists including Picasso, Matisse and Braque, all of whom recognised in Cézanne the pioneer of a new art.

Around 1902, Francis Picabia discovered Impressionism. Inspired by Monet and Pissarro, he began to explore light, movement and atmosphere. Between 1906 and 1909 he worked in Grez-sur-Loing, where he painted ‘Les peupliers’ – shimmering rows of trees, vibrating brushstrokes and the subdued glow of blue and green. Here Picabia developed a personal language that translated nature into rhythm and motion. This brief but decisive phase led him from observation to abstraction, and paved the way for his later radical experiments.

In 1911, Henri Manguin painted ‘Femme endormie, petite Marie’ in Neuilly-sur-Seine. The sleeping figure, imbued with the grace of an odalisque, embodies quiet intimacy; soft contours, radiant Fauve colours and the interplay of light and shadow create a dreamlike sensuality. The painting once belonged to the celebrated Hahnloser collection, whose owners were among the earliest champions of modern French art in Switzerland.