#bather

Oil on linen , 64 x 28 cm.

Chapuzón en el acantilado

Après le bain (also known as After the Bath, Baigneuse, and Bather) (1875) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (French, 1825 – 1905), oil on canvas, 178 cm (70 in) x 88.5 cm (34.8 in), Private Collection

Serban Savu (Romanian, 1978), The Bather, 2009. Oil on canvas, 19 3/4 × 13 3/4 in.

Adolphe Jourdan (French, 1825-1889) Bather at the Spring, 1866

[Source: Christie's]

The Cleveland Museum of Art keeps Charles Émile Jacque's "Young Woman Bathing" in its print collection. You won't see it on the wall unless you ask. That's how prints departments work. Etchings live in solander boxes, pulled out for study, rotated into brief exhibitions before going back into the dark. Light is the enemy - UV fades ink, kills the tonal range that makes a print worth looking at. And this etching from around 1866 lives on tonal range. The crosshatching builds shadow in four or five distinct densities, from open parallel lines on the illuminated belly to tight layered meshes under the raised arm. Jacque is remembered for painting sheep. But he produced over 450 etching plates. This bather stands in classical contrapposto, one hand in her hair, the other at her chin, vegetation at her feet suggesting a riverbank. No Venus, no myth. Just a woman, a copper plate, and a sharp needle. The plate number - "No. 38 _ 3" - sits in the upper left corner, cataloguing her like a specimen. Even the filing system has something to say about how we look at bodies. Quelle: meisterdrucke.com