“The Turkish Bath” by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

“The Turkish Bath” by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres depicts a group of nude women in the bath of a harem and is painted in a highly erotic style. Ingres has successfully evoked both the Near East and earlier western styles associated with the mythological subject matter.

Painted originally in a rectangular format, Ingres altered the painting by cutting the picture to its present tondo form. Fortunately, photographs of the art in its original size have survived.

Its erotic content did not provoke a scandal during Ingres time as it remained in private collections for most of its existence until it moved to The Louvre.

It may be based on a 1717 written description of a Turkish harem by Lady Mary Montagu, where she mentions having viewed some two hundred nude women.

The painting builds on many motifs and figures Ingres had explored in earlier pictures, in particular, “The Valpinçon Bather and “Grande Odalisque.”

Ingres returned to the form of “The Valpinçon Bather” several times in his life. Most famously in “The Turkish Bath,” where the central character in the foreground playing the mandolin echoes in rhythm and tone, this figure of the “The Valpinçon Bather.”

The Turkish Bath was the last of his Orientalist paintings of the female nude and was finished when Ingres was 82 years old. Ingres enjoyed the irony of producing an erotic work in his old age, painting an inscription of his age, AETATIS LXXXII, on the work.

He did not paint this work from live models, but reusing ‘bather’ and ‘odalisque’ figures he had drawn or painted as single figures on beds or beside a bath.

Ingres was a French Neoclassical painter who thought of himself as a painter of history but who is also highly regarded for his many portraits.

Critics often found his style bizarre and archaic. His expressive distortions of form and space make him an important precursor of modern art. His work influenced Picasso and Matisse and other modernists.

Orientalism

As an art movement, Orientalist painting is generally treated as one of the many branches of 19th-century academic art. Orientalism is a term used by art historians and scholars to depict aspects in the Eastern world, usually done by artists from the West.

In particular, Orientalist painting, depicting more specifically “the Middle East,” was one of the many specialisms of 19th-century academic art of Western countries.

The Turkish Bath

Title: The Turkish Bath
French: Le Bain Turc
Artist: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Created: 1862
Media: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 108 × 110 cm (42.5 × 43.3 in)
Museum: The Louvre

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

Name: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Born: 1780 – Montauban, Languedoc, France
Died: 1867 (aged 86) – Paris, France
Movement: Neoclassicism
Notable Works::
- Ruggiero Freeing Angelica
- The Valpinçon Bather
- The Turkish Bath
- Grande Odalisque
- Madame Moitessier ( The National Gallery, London)
- Madame Moitessier (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)
- Oedipus and the Sphinx (Louvre Museum)
- Oedipus and the Sphinx (Walters Art Museum)

“The Turkish Bath” by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

A Virtual Tour of the Louvre Paintings

“The Mona Lisa” by Leonardo da Vinci
“Ruggiero Freeing Angelica” by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
“The Valpinçon Bather” by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
“The Turkish Bath” by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
“Grande Odalisque” by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
“Perseus and Andromeda” by Joachim Wtewael
Self-portrait with Her Daughter, Julie by Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
“The Virgin and Child with St. Anne” by Leonardo da Vinci
“Louis XIV of France” by Hyacinthe Rigaud
“The Massacre at Chios” by Eugène Delacroix
“The Battle of San Romano” by Paolo Uccello
“Virgin of the Rocks” by Leonardo da Vinci
“The Death of Sardanapalus” by Eugène Delacroix
“Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss” by Antonio Canova
“Liberty Leading the People” by Eugène Delacroix
“The Arcadian Shepherds” by Nicolas Poussin
“The Lacemaker” by Johannes Vermeer
“The Money Changer and His Wife” by Quentin Matsys
“The Fortune Teller” by Caravaggio
“Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione” by Raphael

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres: A collection of paintings

“Charles I at the Hunt” by Anthony van Dyck
“An Old Man and his Grandson” by Domenico Ghirlandaio
“Vulcan Presenting Venus with Arms for Aeneas” by François Boucher
“La belle ferronnière” by Leonardo da Vinci
Self-Portrait by Élisabeth Sophie Chéron
The Four Seasons by Nicolas Poussin
“The Death of Marat” by Gioacchino Giuseppe Serangeli after Jacques-Louis David
“Oath of the Horatii” by Jacques-Louis David
“The Coronation of Napoleon” by Jacques-Louis David
“Portrait of the Elector John Frederic the Magnanimous of Saxony” by Lucas Cranach the Elder
“Leonidas at Thermopylae” by Jacques-Louis David
“Entry of Alexander into Babylon” by Charles Le Brun
The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault
“Moses saved from the Waters” by Nicolas Poussin
“The Battle of Anghiari” by Peter Paul Rubens – Copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Lost Painting
“Oedipus and the Sphinx” by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
“Diana Discovering the Pregnancy of Callisto” Attributed to Paul Brill
“Philosopher in Meditation” by Rembrandt
“St John the Baptist” by Leonardo da Vinci
“Cupid and Psyche” by François Gérard
“The Fall of Icarus” by Merry-Joseph Blondel
“Diana Huntress” by School of Fontainebleau
“Diana Huntress” by Bartolomeo Passerotti
“Jewish Wedding in Morocco” by Eugène Delacroix
“Young Painter in his Studio” by Barent Fabritius
“Painter in his Studio” by François Boucher
“Imaginary Gallery of Ancient Roman Art” by Giovanni Paolo Panini
“Picture Gallery with Views of Modern Rome” by Giovanni Paolo Panini
“Bonaparte Visiting the Plague Victims of Jaffa” by Antoine-Jean Gros
Portrait of Gabrielle d’Estrees and her sister the Duchess of Villars
“The Wedding at Cana” by Paolo Veronese
“Portrait of Antonio de Covarrubias” by El Greco