The Two Bathers

Bouguereau finished this in 1884, at the height of his fame. That same year in Paris the young painters shut out of the official Salon set up a show of their own, the Independants, where Seurat had begun the dotted riverbank that became the Grande Jatte. Bouguereau was the reigning star of exactly the academic art they were rebelling against, and he went on making pictures like this, two nude bathers by the sea, flawlessly finished, the nearer one seated on a rock, the other kneeling with her back to us. It sold almost at once. Within a year the canvas had crossed to a collector in Philadelphia for 36,000 francs, and it soon passed on to Chicago, where it hangs today.