Bathing Nymph
François Boucher·c. 1745–50
Historical Context
Bathing Nymph (c. 1745-50), at the Art Institute of Chicago, depicts a female figure at her bath in a natural setting — a subject that allowed Boucher to display his mastery of the female nude within a mythological-pastoral framework. Boucher's nymphs and bathers, with their porcelain-smooth skin and idealized proportions, established the visual standard for feminine beauty in mid-eighteenth-century France. The painting's creamy palette and sensuous handling exemplify the Rococo aesthetic at its most characteristic — art as decorative pleasure, beauty as its own justification.
Technical Analysis
Boucher's smooth, porcelain-like flesh painting creates an idealized surface of pearly luminosity. The composition is carefully arranged for maximum decorative effect, with the landscape setting providing complementary cool tones to the warm flesh.
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.
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