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{{Short description|Painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres}}
{{italic title}}
{{italic title}}
{{Other uses|Turkish Bath (disambiguation)}}
{{Other uses|Turkish Bath (disambiguation)}}
⚫
[[File:Le Bain Turc, by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, from C2RMF retouched.jpg|thumb|480px|''The Turkish Bath'', [[Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres]],
1862–63. [[Louvre]], Paris]]


{{Infobox artwork
⚫
'''''The Turkish Bath''''' ('''''{{Lang|fr|Le Bain Turc}}''''') is an [[oil painting]] by [[Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres]]. It depicts a group of nude women in the bath of a [[harem]], and is painted in a [[erotic art|highly erotic style]] that evokes both the [[Near East]] and earlier western styles associated with [[Greek mythology in western art and literature|mythological subject matter]]. Painted on canvas laid down on wood, it measures 108 x 108 cm.
| title = The Turkish Bath
| other_language_1 = French
| other_title_1 = Le Bain turc
⚫
| image = Le Bain Turc, by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, from C2RMF retouched.jpg
| alt = A large group of nude or barely clothed women lounge around a pool in an Orientalist vision of a harem. Some engage in activities such as eating, dancing, doing each other’s hair, and playing musical instruments. Most are light-skinned but a few have darker skin.
| artist = [[Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres]]
| year = 1852–59, modified in 1862
| medium = Oil on canvas glued to wood
| height_metric = 108
| width_metric = 110
| height_imperial = 42 1/2
| width_imperial = 43 5/16
| metric_unit = cm
| imperial_unit = in
| museum = [[Louvre|Musée du Louvre]]
| city = [[Paris]]
| accession = R.F. 1934
}}


⚫
'''''The Turkish Bath''''' ('''''{{Lang|fr|Le Bain turc}}''''') is an [[oil painting]] by [[Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres]], initially completed between 1852 and 1859, but modified in 1862.<ref name=Louvre>{{cite web|title=The Turkish Bath|website=Louvre|url=https://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/turkish-bath|access-date=18 July 2018}}</ref> The painting depicts a group of nude women at a pool in a [[harem]].<ref name=Louvre/> It has an [[erotic art|erotic style]] that evokes both the [[Near East]] and earlier western styles associated with [[Greek mythology in western art and literature|mythological subject matter]]. The painting expands on a number of motifs that Ingres had explored in earlier paintings,<ref name=Louvre/> in particular ''[[The Valpinçon Bather]]'' (1808) and ''La [[Grande odalisque]]'' (1814) and is an example of Romanticism.
The work is signed and dated 1862, when Ingres was around 82 years old, and was completed in 1863.<ref name="r126">Rosenblum, 126</ref> In that year Ingres altered the painting's original rectangular format, and cut the painting to its present [[Tondo (Art)|tondo]] form. Photographs of the painting in its original format survive.<ref name="r128">Rosenblum, 128</ref>


The work is signed and dated 1862, when Ingres was around 82 years old.<ref name=Rosenblum126>{{cite book|author-last=Rosenblum|author-first=Robert|chapter=Ingres's Portraits and their Muses|editor1-last=Tinterow|editor1-first=Gary|editor2-last=Conisbee|editor2-first=Philip|title=Portraits by Ingres: Image of an Epoch|url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_Ss99wqlznxAC|location=New York|publisher=Metropolitan Museum of Art|date=1999|page=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_Ss99wqlznxAC/page/n138 126]}}</ref> He altered the original rectangular format and changed the painting to a [[Tondo (Art)|tondo]]. A photograph of its original state, taken by [[Charles Marville]], survives.<ref name=Rosenblum128>{{cite book|author-last=Rosenblum|author-first=Robert|chapter=Ingres's Portraits and their Muses|editor1-last=Tinterow|editor1-first=Gary|editor2-last=Conisbee|editor2-first=Philip|title=Portraits by Ingres: Image of an Epoch|url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_Ss99wqlznxAC|location=New York|publisher=Metropolitan Museum of Art|date=2024
It seems based on an April 1717 written description of a Turkish harem by [[Lady Mary Wortley Montagu]],<ref name="m50">Magi, 50</ref> where she mentions having viewed some two hundred nude women.<ref name="r126" /> The painting develops and elaborates a number of motifs Ingres had explored in earlier paintings, in particular his 1808 ''[[The Valpinçon Bather]]'' and ''[[Grande Odalisque]]'' of 1814.
|page=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_Ss99wqlznxAC/page/n140 128]}}</ref>

Its erotic content did not provoke a scandal, since for much its existence it has remained in private collections. It is now in the [[Louvre]], Paris.


==Description==
==Description==
[[File:Ingres Marville Bain Turc 1859.jpg|thumb|left|200px|The original rectangular version of the painting]]
⚫
[[File:Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres - La Baigneuse Valpinçon.jpg|thumb|left|150px|''[[The Valpinçon Bather]]'', 1808. [[Musée du Louvre|Louvre]], Paris.]]
⚫
[[File:Ingres Femme aux trois bras.jpg|thumb|180px|''Woman with Three Arms'' (Study for ''The Turkish Bath''). [[Musée Ingres]], Montauban.]]
⚫
The painting is known for its subtle colourisation, especially the very pale skin of the women resting in the privacy of a bathing area. The figures are given an almost abstract and "slender and sinuous" form,{{citation needed|date=July 2018}} and seem at times to lack skeleton. They are arranged in a very harmonious, circular manner, a curved arrangement that heightens the eroticism of the painting. Its charge is in part achieved through the use of motifs that include the implied haze of Oriental perfume, and the inclusion of vases, running water, fruit and jewels, as well as a palette that ranges from pale white to pink, ivory, light greys and a variety of browns.<ref name=Magi50>{{cite book|last=Magi|first=Giovanna|title=The Grand Louvre and the Musée D'Orsay|publisher=Casa Editrice Bonechi|date=1998|page=50}}</ref>


The choice to convert the painting to a tondo both centralises the composition and adds a voyeuristic element to the composition as the viewer observes the naked women through the oculus. This effect is highlighted as we know Ingres never travelled beyond Europe so his romantic vision of the Bathers is totally idealised.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Loughery |first=John |date=2002 |title=The Romantic Impulse |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3853323 |journal=The Hudson Review |volume=54 |issue=4 |pages=645–652 |doi=10.2307/3853323 |issn=0018-702X}}</ref>
⚫
[[File:Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres - La Baigneuse Valpinçon.jpg|thumb|left|200px|''[[The Valpinçon Bather]]'', 1808. [[Musée du Louvre|Louvre]], Paris]]
[[Image:Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, La Grande Odalisque, 1814.jpg|left|thumb|400px|''[[Grande Odalisque]]'', 1814, Louvre. The subject's elongated proportions, reminiscent of 16th-century [[Mannerism|Mannerist]] painters, reflect Ingres's search for a pure form]]
⚫
[[File:Ingres Femme aux trois bras.jpg|thumb|320px|Study for the painting : a woman with three arms, Montauban museum]]
⚫
The painting is known for its subtle colourisation, especially the very pale skin of the women,fk,n,l;'tyl resting in the privacy of a bathing area. The figures are given an almost abstract and "slender and sinuous" form, and seem at times to lack skeleton. They are arranged in a very harmonious, circular manner, a curved arrangement that heightens the eroticism of the painting. Its charge is in part achieved through the use of motifs that include the implied haze of Oriental perfume, and the inclusion of vases, running water, fruit and jewels, as well as a palette that ranges from pale white to pink, ivory, light greys and a variety of browns.<ref name="m50">Magi, 50</ref>


Ingres relished the irony of producing an erotic work in his old age, painting an inscription of his age (<small>''AETATIS LXXXII''</small>, "at age 82") on the work – in 1867 he told others that he still retained "all the fire of a man of thirty years".<ref name="hh">Hagen & Hagen, 410-415</ref><ref>Ingres quoted in Pach, 158</ref> He did not paint this work from live models, but from [[croquis]] and several of his earlier paintings, reusing 'bather' and '[[odalisque]]' figures he had drawn or painted as single figures on beds or beside a bath.
Ingres relished the irony of producing an erotic work in his old age, painting an inscription of his age (<small>''AETATIS LXXXII''</small>, "at age 82") on the work—in 1867 he told others that he still retained "all the fire of a man of thirty years".<ref name=HagenHagen>{{cite book|last1=Hagen|first1=Rose-Marie|last2=Hagen|first2=Rainer|title=Les dessous des chefs-d'oeuvre|location=Köln|publisher=[[Taschen]]|date=2000|pages=410–415}}</ref><ref name=Pach>{{cite book|last=Pach|first=Walter|title=Ingres|location=New York|publisher=Hacker Art Books|date=1973|page=158}}</ref> He did not paint this work from live models, but from [[croquis]] and several of his earlier paintings, reusing "bather" and "[[odalisque]]" figures he had drawn or painted as single figures on beds or beside a bath.


The figure from his ''[[The Valpinçon Bather]]'' appears almost identically as the central element of the later composition, but now plays a [[mandolin]]. The woman in the background with her arm extended and holding a cup of coffee resembles the sitter in his 1856 portrait of ''[[Madame Moitessier|Marie-Clotilde-Inès Moitessier]]''. The face of the woman with her arms raised above her head in the near right is similar to an 1818 croquis of the artist's wife, Delphine Ramel,<ref name="r128" /> though her right shoulder is lowered whereas her right arm is raised (an anatomical inconsistency usual in Ingres's work – ''[[La Grande Odalisque]]'' has three additional vertebrae). The other bodies are juxtaposed in various unlit areas behind them.
The figure from ''[[The Valpinçon Bather]]'' appears almost identically as the central element of the later composition, but now plays a [[mandolin]]. The woman in the background with her arm extended and holding a cup resembles the sitter in his portrait of [[Madame Moitessier]] (1856). The face of the woman with her arms raised above her head in the near right is similar to a ''croquis'' (1818) of the artist's wife, Delphine Ramel,<ref name=Rosenblum128/> though her right shoulder is lowered while her right arm is raised. The other bodies are juxtaposed in various unlit areas behind them.


Ingres's draws from a wide variety of painterly sources, including 19th-century academic art, [[Neoclassicism]] and late [[Mannerism]]. While at first look the painting might seem like a corporeal descent into wild abandon, it is in actuality very still, precise and geometrical throughout. The colourisation is one of "chastising coolness", while figures merge into each other in a manner that evokes sexuality, but ultimately is intended to show his skill at defying rational perspective Ingres invokes a setting that is both very real and only imaginary.<ref name="r128" />
Ingres drew from a wide variety of painterly sources, including 19th-century academic art, [[Neoclassicism]] and late [[Mannerism]].{{citation needed|date=July 2018}} The colourisation is one of "chastising coolness", while figures merge into each other in a manner that evokes sexuality, but ultimately is intended to show Ingres's skill at defying rational perspective.<ref name=Rosenblum128/>
{{clear}}


==Orientalist influences==
==Influence==
⚫
Ingres was influenced by the contemporary fashion for [[Orientalism]], relaunched by Napoleon's [[French invasion of Egypt (1798)|invasion of Egypt]]. On leaving for Italy in 1806, he copied in his notebooks a text extolling "the baths of the seraglio of Mohammed", in which can be read a description of a harem where one "goes into a room surrounded by sofas [...] and it is there that many women destined for this use attend the sultana in the bath, wiping her handsome body and rubbing the softest perfumes into her skin; it is there that she must then take a voluptuous rest".<ref name=HagenHagen/><ref>{{cite book|title=Catalogue de l'exposition du Louvre: Le Bain turc d'Ingres|location=Paris|date=1971|pages=4–5}}</ref>
[[File:A Tepidarium with Female Nudes.jpg|thumb|left|280px|[[School of Fontainebleau]], ''A Tepidarium with Female Nudes'', 16th century]]
⚫
Ingres was influenced by the then fashion for [[Orientalism|Orientalist]], re-launched by Napoleon's [[French invasion of Egypt (1798)|invasion of Egypt]]. On leaving for Italy in 1806, he copied in his notebooks a text extolling 'the baths of the seraglio of Mohammed', in which can be read a description of a harem where one "goes into a room surrounded by sofas [...] and it is there that many women destined for this use attend the sultana in the bath, wiping her handsome body and rubbing the softest perfumes into her skin; it is there that she must then take a voluptuous rest".<ref name="hh" /><ref>Catalogue de l'exposition du Louvre : Le Bain turc d'Ingres, Paris 1971. 4, 5</ref>


[[File:La grande piscine de brousse.jpg|thumb|320px|[[Jean-Léon Gérôme]], ''Women at a Bath'', Salon of 1885. Hermitage, Leningrad]]
[[File:La grande piscine de brousse.jpg|thumb|250px|[[Jean-Léon Gérôme]], ''Women at a Bath'', (''La grande piscine de Brousse, The Great Bath at Bursa)'' Salon of 1885. Hermitage, St. Petersburg [[Museum of Western and Oriental Art]]]]
In 1825, he copied a passage from ''Letters from the Orient'' by [[Lady Mary Wortley Montagu|Lady Mary Montagu]], who had accompanied her British diplomat husband to the [[Ottoman Empire]] in 1716. Her letters had been re-published eight times in France alone between 1763 and 1857, adding to the Orientalist craze. The passage Ingres copied was entitled "Description of the women's bath at [[Adrianople]]" and reads: "I believe there were two hundred women there in all. Beautiful naked women in various poses... some conversing, others at their work, others drinking coffee or tasting a [[sorbet]], and many stretched out nonchalantly, whilst their slaves (generally ravishing girls of 17 or 18 years) plaited their hair in fantastical shapes."<ref name="hh" /><ref name="m133">Montagu, 133</ref>
In 1825, he copied a passage from ''Letters from the Orient'' by [[Lady Mary Wortley Montagu]], who had accompanied her British diplomat husband to the [[Ottoman Empire]] in 1716. Her letters had been re-published eight times in France alone between 1763 and 1857,{{citation needed|date=July 2018}} adding to the Orientalist craze. The passage Ingres copied was entitled "Description of the women's bath at [[Adrianople]]" and reads: "I believe there were two hundred women there in all. Beautiful naked women in various poses... some conversing, others at their work, others drinking coffee or tasting a [[sorbet]], and many stretched out nonchalantly, whilst their slaves (generally ravishing girls of 17 or 18 years) plaited their hair in fantastical shapes."<ref name=HagenHagen/><ref name=Montagu>{{cite book|last=Montagu|first=Lady Mary|title=L'islam au péril des femmes, une Anglaise en Turquie au XVIIe siècle|location=Paris|date=1981|page=133}}</ref> The environment of ''The Turkish Bath'', however, bears little resemblance to the public bathing described by Lady Montagu.<ref name=Yeazell>{{cite journal|last=Yeazell|first=Ruth Bernard|title=Public Baths and Private Harems: Lady Mary Worley Montagu and the Origins of Ingres's ''Bain Turc''|journal=Yale Journal of Criticism|volume=7|number=1|date=Spring 1994|page=116}}</ref>


⚫
In contrast to [[Eugène Delacroix]], who visited an Algerian harem, Ingres never travelled to Africa or the Middle East, and the courtesans shown are more Caucasian and European than Middle Eastern or African in appearance.<ref>Ali, Isra (2015). "The Harem Fantasy in Nineteenth-Century Orientalist Paintings". ''Dialectical Anthropology''. '''39''' (1): 33–46.</ref> For Ingres the oriental theme was above all a pretext for portraying the female nude in a passive and sexual context. Exotic elements are few and far between in the image: musical instruments, a [[censer]] and a few ornaments.
[[File:Ingres Etude Bain Turc Louvre 1859.jpg|220px|thumb|''Study'', 1859. Louvre, Paris]]
⚫
In contrast to [[Eugène Delacroix|Delacroix]] (who visited an Algerian harem), Ingres never travelled to Africa or the Middle East, and the courtesans shown are more Caucasian and European than Middle Eastern or African in appearance. For Ingres the oriental theme was above all a pretext for portraying the female nude in a passive and sexual context. Exotic elements are few and far between in the image: musical instruments, a [[censer]] and a few ornaments.


==Provenance==
==Provenance==
The painter's first buyer was a relation of [[Napoleon III]], but he handed it back some days later, his wife having found it "unsuitable" ("peu convenable").<ref name="A">Anecdotes cited by Rose-Marie & Rainer Hagen, 415</ref> It was finally bought in 1865 by [[Khalil Bey]], a former Turkish diplomat who added it to his collection of erotic paintings.
The painter's first buyer was a relation of [[Napoleon III]], but he handed it back some days later, his wife having found it "unsuitable" ("peu convenable").<ref name=HagenHagen/> It was purchased in 1865 by [[Khalil Bey]], a former Turkish diplomat who added it to his collection of erotic paintings.<ref name=Haskill>{{cite journal|last=Haskill|first=Francis|title=A Turk and His Pictures in Nineteenth-Century Paris|journal=Oxford Art Review|volume=5|number=1|date=1982|pages=40–47|doi=10.1093/oxartj/5.1.40}}</ref>


[[Edgar Degas]] demanded that ''The Turkish Bath'' be shown at the [[Exposition Universelle (1855)|exposition universelle]], in the wake of which came contrasting reactions – [[Paul Claudel]] compared it with a "cake full of maggots".<ref name="A" /> At the start of the 20th century, patrons wished to offer ''The Turkish Bath'' to the Louvre, but the Louvre's council refused it twice. After the national collections of [[Munich]] offered to buy it the Louvre finally accepted it in 1911, thanks to a gift by the Société des Amis du Louvre, to whom the patron [[Maurice Fenaille]] made a 3-year interest-free loan of 150,000 Francs for the purpose.
[[Edgar Degas]] demanded that ''The Turkish Bath'' be shown at the [[Exposition Universelle (1855)]], in the wake of which came contrasting reactions: [[Paul Claudel]], for example, compared it to a "cake full of maggots".<ref name=HagenHagen/> At the start of the 20th century, patrons wished to offer ''The Turkish Bath'' to the Louvre, but the museum's council refused it twice.<ref name=Hagen2>{{cite book|author1-last=Hagen|author1-first=Rose-Marie|author2-last=Hagen|author2-first=Rainer|title=What Great Paintings Say|location=Köln|publisher=Taschen GmbH|date=2003|volume=1|page=415}}</ref> After the national collections of [[Munich]] offered to buy it, the Louvre finally accepted it in 1911,<ref name=Hagen2/> thanks to a gift by the [[Société des amis du Louvre]], to whom the patron [[Maurice Fenaille]] made a three-year interest-free loan of 150,000 Francs for the purpose.{{citation needed|date=July 2018}}


==See also==
==See also==
*[[List of paintings by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres]]
*[[Orientalism]]
*[[Orientalism]]
*[[Turkish bath]]
*[[Hammam]]
*[[seraglio]]
*[[Seraglio]]
*[[Haremlik]]
*[[Haremlik]]
* ''[[100 Great Paintings]]'', 1980 BBC series


== References ==
== References ==
{{reflist|1}}
{{reflist}}

== Bibliography ==
{{refbegin}}
* D'Souza, Aruna. ''Cezanne's Bathers: Biography and the Erotics of Paint''. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008. {{ISBN|978-0-2710-3214-6}}
* [[Lady Mary Montagu|Montagu, Mary]]. ''L'islam au péril des femmes, une Anglaise en Turquie au XVIIe siècle''. Paris 1981
* Magi, Giovanna. ''The Grand Louvre and the Musee D'Orsay''. Casa Editrice Bonechi, 1998. {{ISBN|978-8-8700-9780-1}}
* Pach, Walter. ''Ingres''. New York, 1973
* Hagen, Rose-Marie; Hagen, Rainer. ''Les dessous des chefs-d'œuvre''. Köln: Taschen 2000
* Rosenblum, Robert. "Ingres's Portraits and their Muses". In: Tinterow, Gary; Conisbee, Philip (eds). ''Portraits by Ingres: Image of an Epoch''. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999. {{ISBN|978-0-3000-8653-9}}
* Toussaint, Hélène. ''Catalogue de l'exposition du Louvre : Le Bain Turc d'Ingres''. Paris: Musée du Louvre, 1971
{{refend}}


== External links ==
== External links ==
*[http://www.artble.com/artists/jean_auguste_dominique_ingres/paintings/the_turkish_bath ''The Turkish Bath'' Analysis]
*[https://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/turkish-bath ''The Turkish Bath'', Musée du Louvre]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20110721023356/http://mucri.univ-paris1.fr/mucri11/article.php3?id_article=115&var_recherche=makarius Un rêve oriental] {{fr icon}} by Michel Makarius, on [https://web.archive.org/web/20100909112116/http://mucri.univ-paris1.fr/mucri11/ le ''Musée critique de la Sorbonne'']
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20110721023356/http://mucri.univ-paris1.fr/mucri11/article.php3?id_article=115&var_recherche=makarius Un rêve oriental] {{in lang|fr}} by Michel Makarius, [https://web.archive.org/web/20100909112116/http://mucri.univ-paris1.fr/mucri11/ Musée critique de la Sorbonne]
*[http://www.mheu.org/en/bathing/ A virtual exhibition about bathing in art, from Cranach to Fellini]
*[http://www.mheu.org/en/bathing/ ''Bathing'', Musée historique environnement urbain]


{{Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres}}
{{Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres}}
{{Louvre Museum}}

{{Authority control}}
{{Authority control}}


{{DEFAULTSORT:Turkish Bath, The}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Turkish Bath, The}}
[[Category:Paintings by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres]]
[[Category:Paintings by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres]]
[[Category:1862 paintings]]
[[Category:1862 paintings]]
[[Category:Paintings of the Louvre]]
[[Category:Paintings in the Louvre by French artists]]
[[Category:Nude art]]
[[Category:Nude art]]
[[Category:Musical instruments in art]]
[[Category:Musical instruments in art]]
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[[Category:Dance in art]]
[[Category:Bathing in art]]
[[Category:Bathing in art]]
[[Category:Public baths]]
[[Category:Erotic art]]
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[[Category:Bathing]]
[[Category:Sauna]]

Latest revision as of 10:44, 21 October 2024

For other uses, see Turkish Bath (disambiguation).
The Turkish Bath
French: Le Bain turc
A large group of nude or barely clothed women lounge around a pool in an Orientalist vision of a harem. Some engage in activities such as eating, dancing, doing each other’s hair, and playing musical instruments. Most are light-skinned but a few have darker skin.
ArtistJean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Year1852–59, modified in 1862
MediumOil on canvas glued to wood
Dimensions108 cm × 110 cm (42 1/2 in × 43 5/16 in)
LocationMusée du Louvre, Paris
AccessionR.F. 1934

The Turkish Bath (Le Bain turc) is an oil painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, initially completed between 1852 and 1859, but modified in 1862.[1] The painting depicts a group of nude women at a pool in a harem.[1] It has an erotic style that evokes both the Near East and earlier western styles associated with mythological subject matter. The painting expands on a number of motifs that Ingres had explored in earlier paintings,[1] in particular The Valpinçon Bather (1808) and La Grande odalisque (1814) and is an example of Romanticism.

The work is signed and dated 1862, when Ingres was around 82 years old.[2] He altered the original rectangular format and changed the painting to a tondo. A photograph of its original state, taken by Charles Marville, survives.[3]

Description

[edit]
The original rectangular version of the painting
The Valpinçon Bather, 1808. Louvre, Paris.
Woman with Three Arms (Study for The Turkish Bath). Musée Ingres, Montauban.

The painting is known for its subtle colourisation, especially the very pale skin of the women resting in the privacy of a bathing area. The figures are given an almost abstract and "slender and sinuous" form,[citation needed] and seem at times to lack skeleton. They are arranged in a very harmonious, circular manner, a curved arrangement that heightens the eroticism of the painting. Its charge is in part achieved through the use of motifs that include the implied haze of Oriental perfume, and the inclusion of vases, running water, fruit and jewels, as well as a palette that ranges from pale white to pink, ivory, light greys and a variety of browns.[4]

The choice to convert the painting to a tondo both centralises the composition and adds a voyeuristic element to the composition as the viewer observes the naked women through the oculus. This effect is highlighted as we know Ingres never travelled beyond Europe so his romantic vision of the Bathers is totally idealised.[5]

Ingres relished the irony of producing an erotic work in his old age, painting an inscription of his age (AETATIS LXXXII, "at age 82") on the work—in 1867 he told others that he still retained "all the fire of a man of thirty years".[6][7] He did not paint this work from live models, but from croquis and several of his earlier paintings, reusing "bather" and "odalisque" figures he had drawn or painted as single figures on beds or beside a bath.

The figure from The Valpinçon Bather appears almost identically as the central element of the later composition, but now plays a mandolin. The woman in the background with her arm extended and holding a cup resembles the sitter in his portrait of Madame Moitessier (1856). The face of the woman with her arms raised above her head in the near right is similar to a croquis (1818) of the artist's wife, Delphine Ramel,[3] though her right shoulder is lowered while her right arm is raised. The other bodies are juxtaposed in various unlit areas behind them.

Ingres drew from a wide variety of painterly sources, including 19th-century academic art, Neoclassicism and late Mannerism.[citation needed] The colourisation is one of "chastising coolness", while figures merge into each other in a manner that evokes sexuality, but ultimately is intended to show Ingres's skill at defying rational perspective.[3]

Orientalist influences

[edit]

Ingres was influenced by the contemporary fashion for Orientalism, relaunched by Napoleon's invasion of Egypt. On leaving for Italy in 1806, he copied in his notebooks a text extolling "the baths of the seraglio of Mohammed", in which can be read a description of a harem where one "goes into a room surrounded by sofas [...] and it is there that many women destined for this use attend the sultana in the bath, wiping her handsome body and rubbing the softest perfumes into her skin; it is there that she must then take a voluptuous rest".[6][8]

Jean-Léon Gérôme, Women at a Bath, (La grande piscine de Brousse, The Great Bath at Bursa) Salon of 1885. Hermitage, St. Petersburg Museum of Western and Oriental Art

In 1825, he copied a passage from Letters from the Orient by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who had accompanied her British diplomat husband to the Ottoman Empire in 1716. Her letters had been re-published eight times in France alone between 1763 and 1857,[citation needed] adding to the Orientalist craze. The passage Ingres copied was entitled "Description of the women's bath at Adrianople" and reads: "I believe there were two hundred women there in all. Beautiful naked women in various poses... some conversing, others at their work, others drinking coffee or tasting a sorbet, and many stretched out nonchalantly, whilst their slaves (generally ravishing girls of 17 or 18 years) plaited their hair in fantastical shapes."[6][9] The environment of The Turkish Bath, however, bears little resemblance to the public bathing described by Lady Montagu.[10]

In contrast to Eugène Delacroix, who visited an Algerian harem, Ingres never travelled to Africa or the Middle East, and the courtesans shown are more Caucasian and European than Middle Eastern or African in appearance.[11] For Ingres the oriental theme was above all a pretext for portraying the female nude in a passive and sexual context. Exotic elements are few and far between in the image: musical instruments, a censer and a few ornaments.

Provenance

[edit]

The painter's first buyer was a relation of Napoleon III, but he handed it back some days later, his wife having found it "unsuitable" ("peu convenable").[6] It was purchased in 1865 by Khalil Bey, a former Turkish diplomat who added it to his collection of erotic paintings.[12]

Edgar Degas demanded that The Turkish Bath be shown at the Exposition Universelle (1855), in the wake of which came contrasting reactions: Paul Claudel, for example, compared it to a "cake full of maggots".[6] At the start of the 20th century, patrons wished to offer The Turkish Bath to the Louvre, but the museum's council refused it twice.[13] After the national collections of Munich offered to buy it, the Louvre finally accepted it in 1911,[13] thanks to a gift by the Société des amis du Louvre, to whom the patron Maurice Fenaille made a three-year interest-free loan of 150,000 Francs for the purpose.[citation needed]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b c "The Turkish Bath". Louvre. Retrieved 18 July 2018.
  2. ^ Rosenblum, Robert (1999). "Ingres's Portraits and their Muses". In Tinterow, Gary; Conisbee, Philip (eds.). Portraits by Ingres: Image of an Epoch. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 126.
  3. ^ a b c Rosenblum, Robert (2024). "Ingres's Portraits and their Muses". In Tinterow, Gary; Conisbee, Philip (eds.). Portraits by Ingres: Image of an Epoch. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 128.
  4. ^ Magi, Giovanna (1998). The Grand Louvre and the Musée D'Orsay. Casa Editrice Bonechi. p. 50.
  5. ^ Loughery, John (2002). "The Romantic Impulse". The Hudson Review. 54 (4): 645–652. doi:10.2307/3853323. ISSN 0018-702X.
  6. ^ a b c d e Hagen, Rose-Marie; Hagen, Rainer (2000). Les dessous des chefs-d'oeuvre. Köln: Taschen. pp. 410–415.
  7. ^ Pach, Walter (1973). Ingres. New York: Hacker Art Books. p. 158.
  8. ^ Catalogue de l'exposition du Louvre: Le Bain turc d'Ingres. Paris. 1971. pp. 4–5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  9. ^ Montagu, Lady Mary (1981). L'islam au péril des femmes, une Anglaise en Turquie au XVIIe siècle. Paris. p. 133.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  10. ^ Yeazell, Ruth Bernard (Spring 1994). "Public Baths and Private Harems: Lady Mary Worley Montagu and the Origins of Ingres's Bain Turc". Yale Journal of Criticism. 7 (1): 116.
  11. ^ Ali, Isra (2015). "The Harem Fantasy in Nineteenth-Century Orientalist Paintings". Dialectical Anthropology. 39 (1): 33–46.
  12. ^ Haskill, Francis (1982). "A Turk and His Pictures in Nineteenth-Century Paris". Oxford Art Review. 5 (1): 40–47. doi:10.1093/oxartj/5.1.40.
  13. ^ a b Hagen, Rose-Marie; Hagen, Rainer (2003). What Great Paintings Say. Vol. 1. Köln: Taschen GmbH. p. 415.
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