GENERAL DESCRIPTION
This is the type of composition that established Franҫois Lemoyne's reputation as one of the greatest French painters of his generation. Executed during the young artist's stay in Italy through the patronage of his wealthy supporter François Berger, the painting met with critical acclaim when it was exhibited at the Parisian Salon of 1725 upon Lemoyne's triumphant return to France. A second version of the composition is now in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg.
Lemoyne's ability to conjure the humid softness of female flesh reflects his close study of the Venetian masters and the art of the internationally renowned Peter Paul Rubens. The absence of any obvious mythological or historical narrative pretext for the representation of the female nude is an innovation for which Lemoyne should be credited.
Adapted from
Dorothy Kosinski, DMA label text, 1996.
NOTES
former number according to education doc- T43007.22
AFTER EDITING, SEND TMS INFO TO BMAC FOR ARCHIVING
Viewers in the early eighteenth century would have assumed a painting of a nude woman must have illustrated an episode from mythology or the Bible. In fact, however, Francois Lemoyne did not borrow this subject from any source. There is no "story" behind the picture; it is simply what you see. The Bather proved enormously important and influential. By allowing artists to paint an image ofgreat beauty for its own sake, free of the requirement to tell a story, it directly affected much ofwhat followed in the history of European painting.
From- didactic and label copy in education files, no date or author.
LEMOYNE THE BATHER-
The Bather is the most beautiful work in the collection. It’s not difficult to see why any collector might be seduced by the pearly tones of the elegant beauty depicted in the painting, as she dips her foot to test the water in her bathing pool. It’s the frankly sensuous nature of a picture like this that was its original attraction in the eighteenth century. It was very much admired, and it is quite a famous picture. In fact, Lemoyne made himself a replica—a very beautiful copy of it—which is now in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg. The painting’s luscious beauty remains attractive to most viewers today, even though early eighteenth-century Paris is such a long way from twenty-first-century Dallas.
Mr. Rosenberg once told me the various options he considered as a collector. It was only French eighteenth-century paintings that won the approval of both his shrink and his rabbi. I’m not quite sure what it was they approved of, but if collecting is in some way a search for emotional completion or is a projection of our fantasies, then Mr. Rosenberg was positively directed toward enjoyment of the senses and of the material world.
The bather’s life-affirming activity is fully in harmony with the dominant artistic ideology of the eighteenth century as it is manifested in his collection. The flesh tones of the bathing beauty are set off by the band of pearls in her hair. The band is played off against her blond hair, creamy flesh, and white chemise, which is very discreetly being removed by her pretty, dark-haired assistant, on the right-hand side, who is herself a quite voluptuous beauty and who seems to have wandered in from a mythological painting by Peter Paul Rubens, the Flemish seventeenth-century master whom Lemoyne greatly admired. Throughout the painting, Lemoyne found the perfect concurrence in the sensuous method of his oil paint for the flesh and the fabrics that he depicted. This bather is no earthly beauty. She is slightly mannered or idealized in her grace, filtered through Lemoyne’s imagination and knowledge of art.
The Bather was painted in Italy, where Lemoyne spent several years studying in Venice and Rome. Since the mid-seventeenth century, French painters had been sent south of the Alps to study the noble forms of ancient sculpture and the grand manner of Italian Renaissance masters, such as Raphael and Michelangelo in Florence and Rome. The intention was that French painting should become equally as grand and as historically resonant as the admired Renaissance prototypes. But Lemoyne was essentially a sensualist and was more attracted to the blandishments of color, light, and materiality, which characterize Venetian painting. Rubens and the Flemish painterly tradition, of course, played into that.
In this preference, Lemoyne was in harmony with most of his contemporaries who were artists in the decades on either side of 1700. Those artists were reacting to the classical style and the ponderous meaning of art promoted by the French Académie Royale, which had been founded in the mid-seventeenth century. The DMA has a perfect example of French academic painting of this time, The Shepherd Faustulus Bringing Romulus and Remus to His Wife by Nicolas Mignard (fig. 2). Mignard was from Avignon, trained in Paris, and spent time in Rome. (12-13)
Philip Conisbee, "Michael L. Rosenberg's Eighteenth Century," 11-23, in French Art of the Eigteenth Century: The Michael L. Rosenberg Lecture Series at the Dallas Museum of Art, Heather MacDonald ed. Dallas Museum of Art and the Michael L. Rosenberg Foundation, distributed by Yale University press, New Haven, CT, 2016.
The depiction of female bathers without the framework of an established story became a new feature in French painting in the 1720s. François Lemoyne’s Bather, painted in 1724 (fig. 65), was the first prominent painting of that type.27 With Lemoyne, the accepted framework of a historical or biblical subject had been dropped to create a different and fully unapologetic type of painting. When Watteau had painted similar female nudes around 1717/19, they had still remained private works and were tellingly not engraved. Lemoyne’s painting was painted for the well-known fermier général, or tax farmer, François Berger and shown at the Salon of 1725—a truly public work. We do not know when Pater began to explore the subject of female bathers, but a similar scene (Stockholm, Nationalmuseum) was acquired in 1729 by Count Tessin and must have been painted by that date. It is thus likely that Lemoyne’s painting provided a starting point for Pater’s new departure at a time when Lemoyne’s stylistic influence on Pater was also obvious.
Christoph Martin Vogtherr, "Moving on from Watteau: Jean-Baptiste Pater and the Transformation of the Fête Galante," 81-94, in French Art of the Eigteenth Century: The Michael L. Rosenberg Lecture Series at the Dallas Museum of Art, Heather MacDonald ed. Dallas Museum of Art and the Michael L. Rosenberg Foundation, distributed by Yale University press, New Haven, CT, 2016.
SEE ALSO pp 70, 74, 75, 88, 89, 90, 91, 105
Full General Description:
This is the prime version of the composition that established Lemoyne's reputation as one of the greatest French painters of his generation. Executed during the young artist's stay in Italy through the patronage of his wealthy supporter François Berger, the painting met with critical acclaim when it was exhibited at the Parisian Salon of 1725 upon Lemoyne's triumphant return to France. A second version of the composition is now in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg.
Lemoyne's ability to conjure the humid softness of female flesh reflects his close study of the Venetian masters and the art of the internationally renowned Peter Paul Rubens. The absence of any obvious mythological or historical narrative pretext for the representation of the female nude is an innovation for which Lemoyne should be credited.
Excerpt from
Dorothy Kosinski, DMA label text, 1996.
Catalogue essays
Artist/designers
François Lemoyne, French, 1688 - 1737
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Place of origin: France (nation): TGN: 1000070
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1724
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Lent by the Micheal L. Rosenberg Foundation
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- The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles~Read a biography of the artist.
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General Description
This is the type of composition that established Franҫois Lemoyne's reputation as one of the greatest French painters of his generation. Executed during the young artist's stay in Italy through the patronage of his wealthy supporter François Berger, the painting met with critical acclaim when it was exhibited at the Parisian Salon of 1725 upon Lemoyne's triumphant return to France. A second version of the composition is now in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg.
Lemoyne's ability to conjure the humid softness of female flesh reflects his close study of the Venetian masters and the art of the internationally renowned Peter Paul Rubens. The absence of any obvious mythological or historical narrative pretext for the representation of the female nude is an innovation for which Lemoyne should be credited.
Adapted from
Dorothy Kosinski, DMA label text, 1996.
Fun Facts
Archival Resources
Web Resources
Notes
former number according to education doc- T43007.22
AFTER EDITING, SEND TMS INFO TO BMAC FOR ARCHIVING
Viewers in the early eighteenth century would have assumed a painting of a nude woman must have illustrated an episode from mythology or the Bible. In fact, however, Francois Lemoyne did not borrow this subject from any source. There is no "story" behind the picture; it is simply what you see. The Bather proved enormously important and influential. By allowing artists to paint an image ofgreat beauty for its own sake, free of the requirement to tell a story, it directly affected much ofwhat followed in the history of European painting.
From- didactic and label copy in education files, no date or author.
LEMOYNE THE BATHER-
The Bather is the most beautiful work in the collection. It’s not difficult to see why any collector might be seduced by the pearly tones of the elegant beauty depicted in the painting, as she dips her foot to test the water in her bathing pool. It’s the frankly sensuous nature of a picture like this that was its original attraction in the eighteenth century. It was very much admired, and it is quite a famous picture. In fact, Lemoyne made himself a replica—a very beautiful copy of it—which is now in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg. The painting’s luscious beauty remains attractive to most viewers today, even though early eighteenth-century Paris is such a long way from twenty-first-century Dallas.
Mr. Rosenberg once told me the various options he considered as a collector. It was only French eighteenth-century paintings that won the approval of both his shrink and his rabbi. I’m not quite sure what it was they approved of, but if collecting is in some way a search for emotional completion or is a projection of our fantasies, then Mr. Rosenberg was positively directed toward enjoyment of the senses and of the material world.
The bather’s life-affirming activity is fully in harmony with the dominant artistic ideology of the eighteenth century as it is manifested in his collection. The flesh tones of the bathing beauty are set off by the band of pearls in her hair. The band is played off against her blond hair, creamy flesh, and white chemise, which is very discreetly being removed by her pretty, dark-haired assistant, on the right-hand side, who is herself a quite voluptuous beauty and who seems to have wandered in from a mythological painting by Peter Paul Rubens, the Flemish seventeenth-century master whom Lemoyne greatly admired. Throughout the painting, Lemoyne found the perfect concurrence in the sensuous method of his oil paint for the flesh and the fabrics that he depicted. This bather is no earthly beauty. She is slightly mannered or idealized in her grace, filtered through Lemoyne’s imagination and knowledge of art.
The Bather was painted in Italy, where Lemoyne spent several years studying in Venice and Rome. Since the mid-seventeenth century, French painters had been sent south of the Alps to study the noble forms of ancient sculpture and the grand manner of Italian Renaissance masters, such as Raphael and Michelangelo in Florence and Rome. The intention was that French painting should become equally as grand and as historically resonant as the admired Renaissance prototypes. But Lemoyne was essentially a sensualist and was more attracted to the blandishments of color, light, and materiality, which characterize Venetian painting. Rubens and the Flemish painterly tradition, of course, played into that.
In this preference, Lemoyne was in harmony with most of his contemporaries who were artists in the decades on either side of 1700. Those artists were reacting to the classical style and the ponderous meaning of art promoted by the French Académie Royale, which had been founded in the mid-seventeenth century. The DMA has a perfect example of French academic painting of this time, The Shepherd Faustulus Bringing Romulus and Remus to His Wife by Nicolas Mignard (fig. 2). Mignard was from Avignon, trained in Paris, and spent time in Rome. (12-13)
Philip Conisbee, "Michael L. Rosenberg's Eighteenth Century," 11-23, in French Art of the Eigteenth Century: The Michael L. Rosenberg Lecture Series at the Dallas Museum of Art, Heather MacDonald ed. Dallas Museum of Art and the Michael L. Rosenberg Foundation, distributed by Yale University press, New Haven, CT, 2016.
The depiction of female bathers without the framework of an established story became a new feature in French painting in the 1720s. François Lemoyne’s Bather, painted in 1724 (fig. 65), was the first prominent painting of that type.27 With Lemoyne, the accepted framework of a historical or biblical subject had been dropped to create a different and fully unapologetic type of painting. When Watteau had painted similar female nudes around 1717/19, they had still remained private works and were tellingly not engraved. Lemoyne’s painting was painted for the well-known fermier général, or tax farmer, François Berger and shown at the Salon of 1725—a truly public work. We do not know when Pater began to explore the subject of female bathers, but a similar scene (Stockholm, Nationalmuseum) was acquired in 1729 by Count Tessin and must have been painted by that date. It is thus likely that Lemoyne’s painting provided a starting point for Pater’s new departure at a time when Lemoyne’s stylistic influence on Pater was also obvious.
Christoph Martin Vogtherr, "Moving on from Watteau: Jean-Baptiste Pater and the Transformation of the Fête Galante," 81-94, in French Art of the Eigteenth Century: The Michael L. Rosenberg Lecture Series at the Dallas Museum of Art, Heather MacDonald ed. Dallas Museum of Art and the Michael L. Rosenberg Foundation, distributed by Yale University press, New Haven, CT, 2016.
SEE ALSO pp 70, 74, 75, 88, 89, 90, 91, 105
Full General Description:
This is the prime version of the composition that established Lemoyne's reputation as one of the greatest French painters of his generation. Executed during the young artist's stay in Italy through the patronage of his wealthy supporter François Berger, the painting met with critical acclaim when it was exhibited at the Parisian Salon of 1725 upon Lemoyne's triumphant return to France. A second version of the composition is now in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg.
Lemoyne's ability to conjure the humid softness of female flesh reflects his close study of the Venetian masters and the art of the internationally renowned Peter Paul Rubens. The absence of any obvious mythological or historical narrative pretext for the representation of the female nude is an innovation for which Lemoyne should be credited.
Excerpt from
Dorothy Kosinski, DMA label text, 1996.
Catalogue essays
Artist/designers
François Lemoyne, French, 1688 - 1737
Cultures
Geography
Place of origin: France (nation): TGN: 1000070
Process/materials
Historical periods
1724
Individuals
Subject terms
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
Lent by the Micheal L. Rosenberg Foundation
AUDIO ASSETS
VIDEO ASSETS
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