The Bathers Gustave Courbet (1819-1877)

Description of Gustave Courbet’s painting The Bathers

Gustave Courbet’s scandalous painting, The Bathers, caused a wide public outcry when it was presented to the public. The artist violated almost every conceivable tradition accepted when depicting people, moreover women.

Exaggerated proportions, extremely unusual and even disgusting for the viewers of the time, the refusal to keep silent about the existence of dirt on the bodies and in addition the complete, absolute lack of plot. The picture simply depicts the bathers doing absolutely nothing.

The poses seem to hint at the fact that there could have been a plot, but there isn’t one, and it was considered at the time an unspoken taboo to paint a nearly naked body of a non-mythical character. At the same time it’s impossible to fault the artist’s craftsmanship: plenty of fine detail, realistic light and shadow, meticulous study and confident strokes. For this and other similar paintings the artist was hated and despised, and many famous people loudly expressed their negative opinion about his entire oeuvre.

The following circumstance seriously aggravated the attitude to this picture: the naked eye can see a hint of Mary Magdalene in the pose of the girl with her arm outstretched in front of her, which is simply blasphemous and could not but cause maximum censure. Courbet was an artist well ahead of his time, and he broke the molds and stereotypes in a brutal way, not caring about his own reputation and well-being; and this is what made his contribution to realism and nude painting particularly significant.

The wave of outrage that stirred up the entire artistic community and touched many great minds far removed from art began the process of changing consciousness, forcing people to think about the boundaries of the normal and the acceptable, and despite the fact that his paintings were repeatedly attacked by those wishing to destroy them, most of them settled for many years in private collections and Courbet remained misunderstood for the rest of his life, he continued to do his important and necessary work, expressing himself through protest to stagnant attitudes.