Oil on panel, 'The Bather', Narcisse-Virgile Diaz de la Peña, after 1850

In a rocky landscape at the edge of a forest, a bare-legged female figure, seated on a rock, is bathing her feet in a weedy pool.

Bequeathed by Constantine Alexander Ionides

Collection G. Arosa, Paris, his sale, 1878, lot 45, 869 francs (ca.£34.10s.); J. Gardiner, from whom purchased on 21 March 1881 as 'La Baigneuse' by Goupil & Co., Paris (stock book no. 15250); from whom bought by Constantine Alexander Ionides, 21 March 1881; listed in his inventory (private collection) in November 1881 at a valuation of £300; bequeathed by Constantine Alexander Ionides to the Museum in 1900.

Historical significance: This painting is a fine example of Diaz de la Peña's landscapes, a category for which he is best known. The present painting depicts a bare-foot woman washing her feet in a stream. The figure is set at the centre of a rocky landscape which occupies three quarters of the panel and leaves little room for the cloudy sky on the left.
The compositional formula is characteristic of Diaz, who often reused the same compositions with a clearing, a pond or a path in the centre and sometimes a small figure while trees occupy half of the painting. There is a very similar composition: Woman Washing in a Stream, in the York Art Gallery, which present an identical setting but a different small female figure seen from the back.
The painting shows a free, broken brushwork in a luminous palette accentuated by flecks of pure colour. Diaz would later intensify this technique and exert a certain influence on artists he advised such as Adolphe Monticelli (1824-1886) and Auguste Renoir (1841-1919).

19th-century French art is marked by a succession of movements based on a more or less close relationship with nature. At the beginning of the century, Romantic artists were fascinated by nature they interpreted as a mirror of the mind. They investigated human nature and personality, the folk culture, the national and ethnic origins, the medieval era, the exotic, the remote, the mysterious and the occult. This movement was heralded in France by such painter as Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863). In its opposition to academic art and its demand for a modern style Realism continued the aims of the Romantics. They assumed that reality could be perceived without distortion or idealization, and sought after a mean to combine the perception of the individual with objectivity. This reaction in French painting against the Grand Manner is well represented by Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) who wrote a 'Manifesto of Realism', entitled Le Réalisme published in Paris in 1855. These ideas were challenged by the group of the Barbizon painters, who formed a recognizable school from the early 1830s to the 1870s and developed a free, broad and rough technique. They were mainly concerned by landscape painting and the rendering of light. The works of Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Peña (1807-1876), Jules Dupré (1811-1889), Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867), Constant Troyon (1810-1865) and Jean-François Millet (1814-1875) anticipate somehow the plein-air landscapes of the Impressionists.

Narcisse-Virgile Diaz de la Peña (1807-1876) was a French painter from Spanish origins. He first worked as a porcelain painter in 1825 but shortly after started training with the artist François Souchon (1787-1857). He soon became the friend of some of the most famous exponents of the Barbizon school such as Honoré Daumier (1808-1879), Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867) and Paul Huet (1803-1869). He regularly exhibited landscapes and genre scenes at the Salon from 1831 to 1859. At the end of his life, he was admired by the new generation of artists who were about to form the Impressionist movement.

This painting is a fine example of Diaz de la Peña's mature style. It shows a bare-foot woman washing her feet in a stream while the rocky landscape almost overwhelmed the small figure. The luminous palette and broken brushwork is typical of the Barbizon school, whose exponents share a deep interest in light effects they render through the decomposition of the colour scheme.

CAI.61