Gruppe von zehn badenden und am Ufer lagernden Mädchen an einem Waldrand 

Johann Christian Klengel produced this pencil drawing of bathing girls at a forest edge, but without a date, it's hard to situate within the artist's body of work, or within the context of German art of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The scene invokes a classical Arcadia: a landscape of leisure, beauty and the female nude. But it's important to remember that such images are never innocent. The question is always: for whose consumption are these images made? Klengel was associated with the Dresden Academy, and we might think of this drawing as part of the academic tradition, in which the study of the nude was central to the formation of the artist, as well as the maintenance of certain canons of beauty. The public role of such art? To reinforce social norms and institutional power. Further research into Klengel's relationship to the Dresden Academy would help us to understand it better.