"Miracles exist. I've encountered them" said Willy Ronis. In his own words, this is the story of how the "Le Nu Provençal" happened:
"Summer 1949, in the ruined house acquired the previous year, in Gordes. It was a hot summer and I was repairing the attic I and I need a certain trowel left on the ground floor. I climb down the stone stairs that pass through our bedroom on the first floor. Just after her siesta, Marie-Anne,is standing naked on the stone floor washing herself from the tin basin (we would fetch water from the fountain). I shout: "Stay as you are!" My Rolleiflex is on a chair, very close. I go up three steps and take four shots, hands patched with plaster. I haver never been so anxious as when I developed that film. I felt that, if the image was good, technically and aesthetically, it would be a major moment in my life, a prosaic moment of extraordinarily poetry. All this took less than two minutes. This is my fetish photo which has appeared, since then, without interruption, here and everywhere".
Ronis often stated that he never chased after the extraordinary, allowing serendipity to take its course.
Provenance
Acquired directly from the Artist in 1980.Exhibitions
MOMA, New York, five French photographers, December 1951 - February 1952MoMA Exh. #497, 12/18 1951-2/24 1952
Exhibition incl. photographs by Brassa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau, Willy Ronis and Izis Bidermanas, selected by Edward Steichen
Literature
https://www.polkamagazine.com/le-nu-provencal-de-willy-ronis/Publications
Sur le fil du Hazard, Editions Contrejour, Paris, 1980, couvertureG. Scimé, Women in the magic Mirror (1842-1981), Selezione Immagini, Monza, 1981, p. 78
Willy Ronis - Pierre Barbin, Willy Ronis par Willy Ronis, (cat. expo.), Association française pour la diffusion du patrimoine photographique, Paris, 1985, ill. 131
Willy Ronis, Sur le fil du hasard, Contrejour, Paris, 1986, couverture et p. 131
Willy Ronis - Bertrand Eveno, Willy Ronis Photo Poche n°46, Centre national de la photographie, Paris, 1991, ill. 22
Peter Hamilton, Willy Ronis, Photographs 1926-1995, MOMA, Oxford, 1995, reproduced pages 38-39.
Willy Ronis, Derrière l'objectif de Willy Ronis, Hoëbeke, Paris, 2001, p. 97
P. Ryan, Willy Ronis, Phaidon, Londres, 2002, p. 50-55
J.-C. Gautrand, Willy Ronis, Taschen, Cologne,2005, p. 181
Willy Ronis - Philippe Sollers, Nues, Éditions Terre Bleue, Paris, 2008, p. 19
Willy Ronis : Une poétique de l'engagement, (cat. expo.), Democratic Books, Monnaie de Paris - Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2010, p. 136
Françoise Denoyelle, Le siècle de Willy Ronis, Éditions Terre Bleue, Paris, 2012, pp. 168-169
M. Rebuzzini, Mirrors of the Magic Muse,Éditions Style Book, Monte-Carlo, 2013, p. 108