The Valpincon Bather

A nude woman sits on the edge of a bed seen from behind, a striped cloth turban wound about her head, her smooth back and shoulder turned to a cool, even light, a green curtain framing the calm. Ingres paints the Valpincon Bather with exquisite, polished line and serene impersonality, the body simplified into pure flowing contour. Now in the Louvre, it is among his most perfect early works - quiet, classical, and timeless, the rear view that he would return to throughout his career as the ideal vehicle for his worship of line and form.