Diana Leaving Her Bath

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Diana Leaving Her Bath: Francois Boucher

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Francois Boucher Oil Painting - Diana Leaving Her Bath

Keywords: Diana, Leaving, Bath

Work Overview: Diana Leaving Her Bath (Diana getting out of her bath; Diana Resting after her Bath)
Francois Boucher
Date: 1742
Style: Rococo
Genre: mythological painting
Media: oil, canvas
Dimensions: 57 x 73 cm
Location: Louvre, Paris, France

This painting is unquestionably Boucher's masterpiece. As a decorative artist, Boucher had amazing facility; in this painting, done for the Salon in 1742, he wished to excel himself. It places him in the ranks of the great masters, and on looking at it one begins to realize how gifted he was, even though he did not always make full use of his talent.

The slender nudes and the hunting theme recall the School of Fontainebleau, of which certain traditions persist in the eighteenth century. The paint surface is intact, and the old varnish, which contains no artificial colouring, gives it a slightly golden tone.

The painting is a masterpiece in the true classical manner; the technique is not too obvious, all the values are harmoniously balanced, and the elegance of the drawing and the purity of the forms are more important than the more sensual charms of colour.

Although painted earlier than the other in this series of Diana, this work forms the concluding panel in the hunting-lodge decoration. It shows the goddess Diana, having completed her refreshing bath after the hunt, beginning to get dressed with a strand of pearls.

As in the other paintings, the clutter of items that surround the central figures are totally subsidiary. Even the hunting dog in the left is presented in such a fashion that he blends into the background.

But the goddess herself is presented only as a ravishngly pretty, rather demure girl. Like her companion, she is reality idealized, divinely blonde (with not a strand of hair out of place), slender, touched with a voluptuous vacancy on her face, a lack of animation which increases her charm. Her features reveal nothing of the hard-hearted goddess of the hunt, despite the tropies near her. Instead, this is a totally human woman; Boucher's idealizing touches are restricted to the refining of ankles and wrists, perfecting the arc of the eyebrows, tinting a deeper red the lips and nipples. Yet herself so desirable, Diana seems without desires, with an innocence that borders on stupidity.

The goddess Diana rests after the hunt, assisted in her ritual toilet by a nymph. Under the veneer of the mythological subject matter, this painting is a hymn to the female body. The refined drawing, glowing skin, gentle touch, and luminous palette attest to the artist's maturity.
Back in favor
This female nude, painted in 1742, was purchased by the Louvre in 1852. It was the first Boucher painting to enter the Louvre since the early 19th century, thus marking the end of a long period when the artist's work, which the revolutionaries judged too frivolous, was out of favor. Exhibited in the Salon of 1742, Diana Leaving Her Bath belongs to a series of small paintings destined for collectors' cabinets.
A very sensual Diana
Diana frequently depicted in 18th-century French painting. In the hands of François Boucher, the huntress abandons her willful character. One can recognize the goddess by her standard attributes: the golden crescent she wears in her hair in reference to her connection with the moon, as well as the bow and recently felled game lying next to her. But most prominent here are the traits in fashion under the reign of Louis XV: the milky complexion, small full face, and curvaceous figure. Her virginal state distances her from any ill intent; she reveals her nudity with total frankness and lack of prudery, like a novice to the world of romance.
An exaltation of the female nude
Boucher is above all interested in the relationship between the body and nature. The intense blue of the drapery is offset by the rosy freshness of skin and the subtle green of the landscape. The treatment of the female nude is particularly delicate here; the modeling of the body is very sensual, as it is constructed entirely of light emanating from the left of the painting.

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