Western Art: 600 Years of Women Getting Out Of Bathtubs

EUROPE, 1500

“Ah, gentleman. I’m glad to see you’ve all managed to arrive safely. I trust you had pleasant journeys.”

Murmurs of assent.

“Let us begin. Europe is at the height of her cultural and political influence; we have the riches of the classical world as well as the novelties of the Age of Discovery to draw upon as we enter a new era of artistic expression. What, then, shall we paint?”

Abashed silence.

“Nothing? Gentlemen, I’m surprised at you. Speak up.”

A small voice from the back of the room.

“What if…what if we draw a lot of pictures of women getting out of the bathtub? From behind?”

Astonished whispers. Bathtubs, women, balderdash, nonsense, never heard of such a thing, backsides.

“Let him speak, gentleman.”

“I think…I think it would be interesting. To just paint a lot of women, stepping out of bathtubs, from the back, for the foreseeable future.”

“Could we also draw these women stepping into the bathtub? Or in the act of bathing itself?”

“No. Only immediately after.”

Another voice interjects.

“Could the ladies be painted from another angle? Facing the painter, for example, or three-quarte–”

“Ladies, stepping out of tubs, from behind.”

“I see. And what kind of fully-bathed women shall we paint?”

“Just tall, Dutch-looking women with braided hair. That’s it.”

“That’s it?”

“Well, maybe a few French ladies. But nobody else.”

“Gentlemen? Shall we put it to a vote?”

The motion carries, unanimously.

Edgar Degas, Woman At Her Bath

Albrecht Dürer, Woman’s Bath

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Large Bathers

François Boucher, Diana After the Bath

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, The Turkish Bath

Edward Degas, Breakfast After A Bath

John Reinhard Weguelin, The Bath

Anders Zorn, Le Tub

Hermann Pleuer, The Bathing Girls

Vladimir Alexandrovich Plotnikov, In The Bath House

Tony Robert-Fleury, Le Bain

Anders Zorn, Girls from Dalarna in the sauna

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Bather Sitting

Paul Peel, A Venetian Bather

Henri Gervex, The Tub

Jean-Léon Gérôme, The Bathers

André Favory, Bathing Nude

Edward Degas, The Bath — Woman Supporting Her Back

Edward Degas, Candaules’s Wife

Alexandre Jacques Chantron, Pleasures of Summer