The Small Bather

On this day, 236 years ago, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres – one of my most favorite artists ever – was born! On this occasion, of course, we just have to present one of his paintings. Enjoy :)

The cool, motionless, meticulously painted central figure in The Small Bather comes from the Bather of Valpinçon, which was painted 18 years earlier (Valpinçon was the name of the collector who bought the painting, now located at the Musée du Louvre, Paris). Her pose in the earlier painting is identical. Her turban is similarly wrapped, although it has red and white stripes, and she has the same drapery around her elbow. The red mule lies on the same spot on the floor by her feet. The setting is different: a bed with white sheets, within an indeterminate surrounding of black marble, and gray, brown, and white drapery. In this much smaller version, Ingres has exchanged sheets for grass, substituting earth for the valance, and placing the sleeping girl’s head in the space occupied by a pillow in the earlier painting. Ingres was clearly fascinated by the bather’s physical type, and he used the central figure in two other works painted after this one. Carefully lit to show off her smooth and perfect skin and the sinuously rounded, supple curves of her neck and shoulder, the curiously boneless bather suggests the icily erotic marbles by Antonio Canova, Ingres’s great Italian contemporary. Ingres studied in Paris under Jacques-Louis David and was a prodigious draftsman. A great admirer of High Renaissance Italian painting, especially the work of Raphael, Ingres spent many years in Rome. See you tomorrow!