Paul Émile Chabas

In 1912 a French academic painter named Paul Chabas showed a canvas at the Paris Salon of a young woman bathing at dawn in a mountain lake, half-turned and shielding herself from the cool air. In France it won a gold medal and caused no fuss at all. Its title was Matinée de Septembre, September Morn.

Then reproductions crossed the Atlantic. In 1913 a Chicago dealer put a print in his window, the mayor had him charged with indecency, and in New York the anti-vice campaigner Anthony Comstock reportedly threatened another dealer over the same demure nude. The threats went nowhere in the courts, but the newspapers loved the fight, and the picture became a sensation in America for reasons that had nothing to do with any Salon.

Chabas was a capable Salon painter of portraits and soft nudes who never had another success anything like it. He kept exhibiting into the 1930s and sat on French art juries. The bather he had painted as a serious Salon picture went on selling by the million across America, printed on postcards, candy boxes, umbrellas and watch fobs.