Park with Nudes

In 1908, Rippl bought a villa in the middle of a woodland on the Róma-hill, a part of Kaposvár. After evocative interiors, he painted a series of nudes there. He selected models from people around him: "In my art, there is a long and feverish Lazarine-peiord. In addition, ... Anella, the child of my wife's sister ... The third model, in whom I was particularly interested, was Fenella." These pictures of Rippl-Rónai represented the "corn" style of patches of paint. The picture shows six nudes bending rhythmically. There are two slim female figures in the background with harehounds lying and standing, a hedge running crosswise, tree trunks, trees, bushes and patches of the sky. It is a decorative plainlike composition. A dotted brown contour surrounds the female nudes. Rippl-Rónai painted bodies as if they were plain, yet the brush left traces of whorls. He modelled the homogenous surface richer. This basically two-dimensional composition highlighted the main character, i.e. the series of nudes moving harmonically. Other elements of the picture are completely homogenous, they consist of patches of paint on one another. He uses two shades of green: the path is fawn-coloured, the sky is yellow, the tree trunk is purple and the colour of the pulp paper appears here and there. Rippl-Rónai was for alla prima painting which assumed quick work. The method he applied was as follows: first, he drew contours which soaked into the pulp paper, then he filled surfaces in between with unpolished colours. He painted the colours right out of the tubes. "One mustn't mix colours on the picture," this was Rippl-Rónai's negative order of making colours fiery.