The Valpinçon Bather
The Valpinçon Bather | |
---|---|
Artist | Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres |
Year | 1808 |
Medium | Oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 146 cm × 97.5 cm (57 in × 38.4 in) |
Location | Louvre, Paris |
The Valpinçon Bather (Fr: La Grande Baigneuse) is an 1808 painting by the French Neoclassical artist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867), held in the Louvre since 1879. Painted while the artist was studying at the French Academy in Rome, it was originally titled Seated Woman but later became known after one of its nineteenth-century owners.
Context
Ingres had earlier painted female nudes, such as his Bathing Woman of 1807, yet this work is widely regarded as his first great treatment of the subject. As in the previous smaller work, the model is shown from behind, however The Valpinçon Bather lacks the earlier painting's overt sexuality, instead depicting a calm and measured sensuality.[1] Ingres returned to the form of this figure a number of times in his life; culminating in his The Turkish Bath of 1863, where the central figure in the foreground playing a mandolin echoes in rhythm and tone the model of the Valpinçon bather.[2][3]
Reception
Although the painting was not met with favour by critics when first exhibited, almost fifty years later, when the artist's reputation was well established, the Goncourt brothers wrote that "Rembrandt himself would have envied the amber color of this pale torso", while the Louvre described it as "a masterpiece of harmonious lines and delicate light".[4]
Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) described the model as having a "deep voluptuousness", yet in many ways she is presented as essentially chaste.[4] This contradiction is apparent in many elements of the painting. The turn of her neck and the curves of her back and legs are accentuated by the fall of the metallic green draperies, the swell of the white curtain in front of her and the folds of the bed sheets and linen. However, these elements are countered by the cool tone in which her flesh is rendered as well as by elements such as the elegant black-veined marble to the left of her.[1]
Remarking on Ingres' ability to paint the human body in a unique manner, the art critic Robert Rosenblum wrote that "the ultimate effect of [The Valpinçon Bather] is of a magical suspension of time and movement—even of the laws of gravity ... the figure seems to float weightlessly upon the enamel smoothness of the surface, exerting only the most delicate pressure, and the gravitational expectations of the heaviest earthbound forms are surprisingly controverted."[1]
See also
Notes
Sources
- Rosenblum, Robert. Ingres. London: Harry N. Abrams, 1990. ISBN 0-300-08653-9
- Siegfried, Susan & Rifkin, Adrian. Fingering Ingres. Wiley-Blackwell, 2001. ISBN 0-631-22526-9
External links
- Louvre caption
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paintings
- The Ambassadors of Agamemnon in the tent of Achilles (1801)
- Oedipus and the Sphinx (1808)
- Jupiter and Thetis (1811)
- Romulus' Victory Over Acron (1812)
- Virgil reading The Aeneid before Augustus, Livia and Octavia (1812)
- The Dream of Ossian (1813)
- Raphael and La Fornarina (1813)
- Paolo and Francesca (1814–1819)
- Don Pedro of Toledo Kissing Henry IV's Sword (1814)
- Aretino and Charles V's Ambassador (1815)
- Henry IV Receiving the Spanish Ambassador (1817)
- The Death of Leonardo da Vinci (1818)
- Roger Freeing Angelica (1819)
- The Dauphin's Entry Into Paris (1821)
- The Vow of Louis XIII (1824)
- The Apotheosis of Homer (1827)
- The Martyrdom of Saint Symphorian (1834)
- The Illness of Antiochus (1840)
- The Odyssey (1850)
- Joan of Arc at the Coronation of Charles VII (1854)
- The Half-Length Bather (1807)
- The Valpinçon Bather (1808)
- La Dormeuse de Naples (1809)
- Grande Odalisque (1814)
- The Source (c 1820)
- Odalisque with Slave (1842)
- Venus Anadyomene (1848)
- The Turkish Bath (1863)
- Bonaparte, First Consul (1804)
- Portrait of Philibert Rivière (1805)
- Portrait of Marie-Françoise Rivière (1805–06)
- Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière (1806)
- Napoleon I on His Imperial Throne (1806)
- La Belle Zélie (1806)
- Portrait of Madame Duvaucey (1807)
- Portrait of Charles Marcotte (1810)
- Portrait of Paul Lemoyne (1811)
- Portrait of Madame de Senonnes (1814)
- Portrait of Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples (1814)
- Portrait of Madame Jacques-Louis Leblanc (1823)
- Portrait of Madame Marcotte de Sainte-Marie (1826)
- Portrait of Amédée de Pastoret (1826)
- Portrait of Monsieur Bertin (1832)
- Luigi Cherubini and the Muse of Lyric Poetry (1842)
- Portrait of Comtesse d'Haussonville (1845)
- Portrait of Baronne de Rothschild (1848)
- Portrait of Madame Moitessier (1844–1856)
- The Princesse de Broglie (1851–1853)
- Portrait of Madame Ingres (1859)
- Self-Portrait Aged 24 (1806)
- Self-Portrait at Seventy-Eight (1858)
- Antwerp Self-Portrait (1864-1865)