Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ The Bather is about as anatomically correct as his Grande Odalisque, which is to say, not at all.

The poet James Fenton put it best, “Ingres loved nudes but hated anatomy.” It’s just something we have to accept about him as an artist and move on. This painting was originally titled Seated Woman but took on the name, The Valpinçon Bather after one of its owners in the 19th century. It was made during Ingres’ time the the French Academy in Rome after winning the Prix de Rome in 1801. He was required to submit three paintings for adjudication and the judges were not stoked on it. The subject matter was out of the ordinary and that was not the vibe of the early 19th century. You played inside the lines and that was that. This piece didn’t get famous until much, much later at the Universal Exhibition in 1855. Critics wrote of the piece that, "Rembrandt himself would have envied the amber color of this pale torso.” Then all of a sudden people flocked to Ingres like he was a genius, meanwhile Ingres was shaking his head wondering where these dummies were before.

Even before he started getting famous for this type of "deep voluptuousness" of nude female bather as Baudelaire put it, Ingres committed to perfecting it. He used this same image in the forefront of The Turkish Bath. He modeled his artistic career after Poussin, who was known for repeating subjects over and over again until he could do it in his sleep. And when the male gaze is alive and uncontested, why not paint naked ladies every day? But just because this woman is nude, doesn’t mean that she is asking anyone to come and get it. She is somehow still chaste in her birthday suit; like some unattainable Greek goddess and is going to stay that way.