Why was The Valpinçon Bather unusual for its time?
Even in the art world of 19th-century France, there were traditionalists.
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Transcript
Even in the art world of 19th-century France, there were traditionalists. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres was one of them. His painting The Valpinçon Bather served as an important contrast to the burgeoning Romantic movement.
Ingres studied under the celebrated artist Jacques-Louis David, and in 1799 he was accepted into the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts.
In 1801 Ingres won the Prix de Rome. This was a scholarship given by the French government to send art students to Rome. However, the French economy was crippled from Napoleon’s wars. The government couldn’t afford to send him. He eventually made it to Rome in 1806.
The Valpinçon Bather was one of the first three paintings Ingres sent back to the École. Officials there were unimpressed by its austere (Aus-teer) linework and tonal simplicity. These techniques were remnants of Ingres’s Neoclassical style, which was falling out of vogue.
The painting depicts a nude woman twisting her back toward the viewer. The pose is both sensual and chaste. Critics have noted that The Valpinçon Bather lacks the more overt sexuality of Ingres’s later nudes.
The color palette is limited to greens, creams, and browns. The darker colors of the curtain slowly lighten across the painting to the pale skin of the woman and the bedsheets. Unlike the dramatic lighting of earlier artistic eras, The Valpinçon Bather is softly lit with subtle shadows.
The work is notable for its unusual lack of motion. Ingres’s decision to leave large portions of the canvas devoid of action draws attention to the stillness of the woman. In another break from tradition, Ingres does not base the nude on any figure in mythology or history. The painting was originally titled Seated Woman, but it was renamed after one of its 19th-century owners. The work seems to be more of a general celebration of femininity than a portrait of a specific woman.
Ingres returned to the female nude multiple times throughout his oeuvre. His paintings finally began to gain acclaim in the 1840s.
Today The Valpinçon Bather hangs in Paris’s Louvre Museum. Ingres has been mocked by some Surrealist and Postmodern artists. Yet he is generally appreciated as an important figure of cultural conservatism.