Le Bain

Jollain gathers a company of women around a bath in a rococo toilette scene of the 1730s — figures in a sunlit interior, the theme of the bath a staple of the French genre painting of the Régence and early Louis XV years, when scenes of women at their toilet or at their ease had become one of the most popular forms of the cabinet picture. Nicolas-René Jollain (dit le Jeune, 1709–1794), the Parisian painter of history and genre, here turns his hand to this intimate domestic subject in the manner of his contemporaries among the Watteau school. The painting is held in the Musée Cognacq-Jay, le goût du XVIIIe.