Les Baigneuses

Around 1765 Fragonard made a choice that shaped the rest of his life. Trained as a history painter and crowned with the Rome prize, he was expected to produce solemn public canvases for the Salon. Instead he turned to pictures like this one, small sensual works for private collectors who paid well and asked no questions. The bathers tumble through water and foliage in a froth of loose, whipped brushwork, more suggestion than drawing. Painters of the day usually dressed their figures in elaborate silks. Here Fragonard strips all that away to play with bare flesh and green shadow. The canvas later hung with Madame du Barry, the last mistress of Louis XV, before the collector Louis La Caze left it to the Louvre in 1869.