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Bain de Soleil (Harper's Bazaar June 1930 Cover), 1930
Price on Request
Details
Medium: gouache on paper
Year: 1930
Sheet size: 15.75 x 11.75"
Image size: 13.25 x 9.75"
Framed size: 21.375 x 18"
Signature: signed 'Erté' lower right
Year: 1930
Sheet size: 15.75 x 11.75"
Image size: 13.25 x 9.75"
Framed size: 21.375 x 18"
Signature: signed 'Erté' lower right
About the Work
"Bain de Soleil" is an original gouache on paper board created by Erté in 1930. "Bain de Soleil, 1930" was the cover design for Harper's Bazaar in June 1930. The artwork is signed 'Erté' lower right, and Erté's 110 Rue de Montgeron Brunoy stamp verso and annotated in fountain pen 'Couverture No 153 (1.704) and titled "Bain de Soleil" (pour la copie du Juin 1930)". The artwork ships framed in a custom closed-corner gold-tone frame and has a framed size of 21.375 x 18".
Romain de Tirtoff, better known as Erté (1892–1990), was one of the most influential visual artists of the twentieth century. His work for "Harper’s Bazaar" helped define the look of luxury, modern femininity, and graphic elegance during the Art Deco era. His cover designs remain enduring icons of the intersection between high fashion and fine art, admired as much for their modernist precision as for their decorative sophistication. Created in 1930, "Bain de Soleil" ("Sunbathing") is one of the finest examples of Erté’s contributions to editorial illustration. This original gouache painting, created for the June 1930 cover of Harper’s Bazaar, distills the artist’s mastery of stylization, abstraction, and symbolic design.
The image is a striking geometric composition, with fields of saturated color intersecting diagonally across the picture plane. On the left, two faces emerge in a progression from pale line to sunlit warmth. Their closed eyes and serene expressions evoke quietude and sensory immersion. Above, a radiant sunburst fills the upper right corner, rendered in angled, tapering rays of gold and crimson, signaling the heat and light of summer. Bold diagonal bars in black, white, and blue cross the lower third, anchoring the composition with architectural balance and modernist flair. With its minimal color palette and carefully balanced geometry, "Bain de Soleil" is more than a fashion illustration—it is a meditation on transformation: from cool shadow to radiant warmth, from anonymity to personhood, from abstraction to emotional presence. Erté visualizes sunlight not only as a climatic element, but as a symbol of emotional and aesthetic awakening.
By 1930, Erté had been collaborating with "Harper’s Bazaar" for over 15 years, creating some of the most celebrated magazine covers in history. He was not merely a commercial illustrator but an artist whose graphic inventiveness shaped the visual language of his time. His work drew on Art Deco, Russian Ballet, Egyptian revivalism, and Cubism, while remaining unmistakably his own. "Bain de Soleil" reflects the cultural and aesthetic ideals of the interwar period: leisure, elegance, and the embrace of modern design. It also resonates with the 1930s fascination with health, sunbathing, and streamlined beauty. The title itself nods to both contemporary fashion and the increasing popularity of sun culture in Riviera resorts and American advertising.
"Bain de Soleil" is more than a magazine cover—it is a luminous example of how Erté transformed illustration into fine art. With its bold visual rhythm and refined symbolism, it captures the elegance, glamour, and forward-looking spirit of its time - a jewel of Art Deco culture.
About the Artist
Bain de Soleil (Harper's Bazaar June 1930 Cover), 1930
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$58,850.00
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