The Young Bather by Courbet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, July 2010

Artist: Gustave Courbet (French, 1819–1877)

Title: The Young Bather

Date: 1866

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 51 1/4 x 38 1/4 in. (130.2 x 97.2 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929

Accession Number: 29.100.124


Gallery Label:

In 1853, Courbet created a scandal when he exhibited "Bathers" (Musée Fabre, Montpellier), one of his earliest paintings of nudes in a landscape. The realism of his figures shocked his contemporaries, who were accustomed to the idealized nudes of academic art. Here, the highly finished figure contrasts with the more loosely painted landscape background, which was possibly executed with a palette knife rather than a brush.

This painting and five others by Courbet once belonged to the nineteenth-century Turkish collector Khalil Bey.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/collection_database/europe...