Small Brunette Bather 1884

Editor: Fantin-Latour’s "Small Brunette Bather," created in 1884 using oil paint, has this very dreamlike quality to it. What's interesting to me is the almost hazy depiction of the figure against what seems to be a landscape background. What stands out to you most about this piece? Curator: I see an image that actively questions the divisions between academic tradition, which heavily dictated artistic training and subject matter, and emerging impressionistic techniques that prized optical realism. Editor: Could you elaborate on that tension? Curator: The female nude, for example, rooted in classical idealism, was considered one of the highest forms of art within the academic tradition. The artist is, seemingly, participating in traditional conventions of female figuration by creating an objectified nude. Yet, look closely. The figure lacks the clear outline of Ingres or Cabanel. Latour uses short brushstrokes to capture the mutable effect of light and air around the bather's body. It asks how this painter is grappling with this tradition of the female nude, at a time when the Impressionists were using loose brushstrokes to describe their immediate sensations of modern life? Editor: So, you are saying it's the actual making of the painting that subverts convention, the application of oil paint, rather than the subject itself? Curator: Exactly. Fantin-Latour shows us how art practices operate in particular material conditions, and he reflects that tension right in this canvas. This allows us to study and contextualize not just high art, but consider the world surrounding it. Editor: I hadn't considered how the choice of materials and technique itself could carry so much meaning! Thanks for pointing that out. Curator: My pleasure. Thinking about art this way makes us look beyond surface appearances, to the very structures shaping what we see.