Bather 1864

William Bouguereau painted ‘Bather’ with oil on canvas in 1864. Bouguereau was a leading figure in the French Salon system, an institution that held sway over the art world. In this painting we see a nude woman, posed in a way that is supposed to be both alluring and innocent, bathed in a soft light. It is very classical in style. Bouguereau aimed to represent idealised beauty and mythological or biblical themes. He was celebrated for his technical skill and ability to create lifelike figures, but the kind of highly polished academic painting that Bouguereau practiced was soon to be challenged by more radical artists such as the Impressionists, who found the Salon system too stifling. To understand the social conditions that shaped artistic production in nineteenth-century France, we can look to official Salon catalogues, reviews in the press, and the writings of critics and artists themselves. The meaning of art is never fixed, but something we come to understand through its social and institutional context.