The Valpinçon Bather

The Valpinçon Bather (La Baigneuse Valpinçon) is Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s serene study of a young woman seen from behind, seated on the edge of a bed with her back to the viewer. The perfect, unbroken contour of her spine and shoulder made the painting famous among artists and critics, and it remained one of Ingres’s own favourites. Its abstract purity of line influenced Degas, Picasso, and generations of modernists.