The Half-Length Bather

The Half-Length Bather, painted by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres in 1807, shows a woman seen from behind and cropped at the waist, filling the foreground. On her head she wears a white cloth with red stripes wrapped like a turban, which provides the only passage of realistic detail in a figure otherwise rendered with great simplicity. The curve of her back, a gentle and sinuous bend, forms the visual axis of the picture and gives it a quiet sensuality without any narrative. Behind her opens a landscape with a tree, a river and distant mountains beyond a wood, a restrained setting that keeps the focus on the figure.

The work is considered one of Ingres's first female nudes, and it already shows the formal restraint that he would develop further. Perhaps the most striking feature for the viewer is the contrast between the careful description of the turban and the more abstract handling of the bare back.

According to the available information, the canvas was painted in Rome in 1807, as an inscription on the canvas with the artist's signature and date confirms. The painting later passed through several private collections before reaching the Musée Bonnat in Bayonne, where it is now held. It is often compared with The Valpinçon Bather, painted the following year: both show a figure from behind wearing a white headdress with red stripes, and it is thought that the 1807 work may have served as a preliminary study for the later one. Even so, the Bayonne painting has its own character as an early experiment in the female nude.

Painter

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

Date

1807

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

51 × 42 cm

Museum

Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Bayonne

Genre

nude

Depicts

nudity, back, turban, woman

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