Provenance
Possibly sold Chariot and Paillet, Hôtel d’Aligre (Baché, Brilliant, de Cossé, Quené, et al.), Paris, April 22 and following, 1776, no. 77, for 362 livres [the picture is described as “Une Baigneuse. Elle est assise près d’un gros arbre. Le fond est un joli paysage, d’un touché légere & de gout. Ce tableau, d’un ton ferme & argentin, peut être distingué dans les meilleurs de ce Maître: il est très-agréable.”; price according to a letter from Alastair Laing to Susan Wise, dated April 19, [1985]]. Possibly Louis François I de Bourbon, prince de Conti (died 1776), Paris; sold Pierre Remy, Paris, April 8 and following, 1777, no. 722, to Quenet for 330 livres [the picture is described as “Une femme assise qui se lave les jambs dans un pièce d’eau; du paysage fait le fond de ce tableau qui est vaporeux: il est peint sur toile de forme ovale; hauteur 19 pouces, largeur 18 pouces.”; price and buyer according to an annotated copy of the sale catalogue in the Bibliothèque d’Art et d’Archéologie, Paris]. Private collection, England [according to a telegram from Karl Lilienfeld, Van Diemen Galleries, New York, to Robert Harshe dated December 28, 1931, Archives, Art Institute]. Van Diemen and Co. and Dr. Benedict and Co., Berlin, by 1931 [date according to the letter cited above; a letter from René Gimpel to Van Diemen and Co. and Dr. Benedict and Co., dated February 1, 1932, Archives, Art Institute, indicates that they had shown it to Gimpel in Berlin]; sold to the Art Institute through Van Diemen Galleries, New York, 1931.
Accession Number
10287
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
42.6 × 47.1 cm (16 3/4 × 18 1/2 in.); Framed: 59.3 × 64.8 × 10.2 cm (23 3/8 × 25 1/2 × 4 in.)
Classification
Painting
Credit Line
Wilson L. Mead Fund
Background & Context
Background Story
Francois Bouchers Bathing Nymph from around 1745-50 is a quintessential Rococo painting that depicts a female nude in a landscape of artfully arranged trees and water, combining the mythological subject of the bathing nymph with the erotic charge that Boucher brought to the genre with unmatched facility. The nymph, who may be identified with Diana or one of her attendants, sits at the edge of a pool in a pose that combines classical contrapposto with a more modern relaxation of the body, her skin rendered in the pearly whites and pinks that distinguish Bouchers nudes from the more sculptural female bodies of his predecessors. The landscape behind her is a compendium of Rococo natural effects: dappled light filtering through foliage, water reflecting sky and trees, and a decorative arrangement of rocks and vegetation that serves primarily as a backdrop for the figure rather than as a naturalistic environment. Bouchers technique is at its most liquid in this painting, the brush gliding across the canvas surface to create a sheen of paint that mimics the sheen of skin, the effect of porcelain translated into oil. Created at the height of Bouchers career, when he was the favorite painter of Madame de Pompadour and the most sought-after artist in France, the Bathing Nymph exemplifies the combination of eroticism and refinement that made his work the visual equivalent of the decorative arts of the Rococo period.
Cultural Impact
Bouchers bathing nymphs defined the visual vocabulary of Rococo eroticism for two centuries, influencing the development of the female nude in French painting from Fragonard to Ingres to Renoir. His ability to combine mythological subject matter with contemporary erotic appeal established a model for the decorative nude that persists in Western visual culture.
Why It Matters
A quintessential Rococo painting by Boucher depicting a bathing nymph in a decorative landscape with liquid brushwork and pearly flesh tones, exemplifying the eroticism and refinement that made him the defining artist of mid-18th-century France.
