Young Girls by the Seaside

At the Salon of 1879 the novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans, reviewing the show, complained of room after room of tedious pastiches. Next to them, he wrote, this picture and another by Puvis de Chavannes were true marvels. Then he turned on it, asking in what country one might find these anaemic creatures combing their hair in front of a sea carved from flint. The canvas is more than two metres tall. Three young women, half draped in white, rest on a pale shore dotted with flowering shrubs. One lies back against a sandy bank, one sits with her back to us, and the tallest stands facing the water, lifting her long hair in both hands. Puvis kept the picture in his studio until 1887, when it was sold to the collector Émile Boivin. Boivin's grandson gave it to the French national museums in 1970.