Liegender Akt (Une fleur)

Bukovac was a young Croatian painter making his name in Paris when he sent this to the Salon of 1887. He had come up from the Dalmatian coast and trained in the French academic system, and a reclining nude by the sea was exactly the sort of subject Salon judges expected. His woman lies back on a thin veil over a rock at the shoreline, her head turned to us, lifting a small spray of rosebuds toward her lips, the flower that gave the picture its title, Une fleur. It drew notice in both Paris and his homeland, where a Dalmatian painting nudes for the Salon was still news. The canvas has stayed in private hands and surfaces now mainly at auction.