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Seated bather (bather of Valpincon)

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres • Painting, 1808, 146×97.5 cm
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About the artwork
Art form: Painting
Subject and objects: Portrait, Nude
Style of art: Classicism
Technique: Oil
Materials: Canvas
Date of creation: 1808
Size: 146×97.5 cm
Content 18+
Artwork in selections: 61 selections

Description of the artwork «Seated bather (bather of Valpincon)»

"Seated bather" one of the "parcels", which Ingres sent from Rome to the Paris Academy of fine arts as a report about your internship. This poem of the female body, embodied the perfection of a female back. It back was a passion, and it is unlikely we'll call someone who portrayed women back so perfect and with such deification. There is a version that "Bather, depicted to the waist",it is a sketch for "Sitting bather".

Nude is one of the favorite subjects of classicists. The novelty of this picture is that it is Nude in the genre. Some researchers even believe "the Bather of Valpincon" the first painting, where the Nude had appeared in the framework of genre.

Noteworthy, on the one hand, chastity of the image. The girl sits with his back turned. Warm, Golden, sleek body is contrasted by the cool white sheets. The plot is modest, but what is the scope for the imagination! These slightly tangled sheets seem to still remember the warmth of her body. Crossed legs, the right foot is visible to the audience, under the feet of discarded red shoes. Reset is the key word. Almost 60 years later "Woman with a parrot"Gustave Courbet would cause a huge scandal. Near the naked girl – Oh, the horror! – carelessly discarded robe. This is not just a naked woman, it is terrible to say, naked! Ingres is much more restrained – it just bather undressed! The woman's face we see, her hair gathered with a silk scarf, but given the passion with which the brush of Ingres and it seems that caressed every inch of velvet skin, it only enhances the sensuality of the image.

Special attention is given this item as a outdoor faucet in the bathroom (bottom left). When his notice, it seems, is heard the sound of water. However, the main feature not even this. The picture in the guilt of his contemporaries put excessive frankness – by the eagerness with which Ingres painted the bather allows the imagination of the viewer to independently recreate subsequent events. But after a few minutes the girl will reject a drop-down with the left hand and the veil fall in filled with clear water...

The wide audience of the film was presented at the world exhibition in 1855. Merit is Edgar Degas– he saw the picture in the house of a friend of his father, a famous collector Edward Valpincon whose name is often referred to as the bather, and persuaded him to expose the canvas.

Author: Alain Esaulova
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