Few things are as evocative, intimate, and private as moments spent bathing.
The bathtub offers an emotional framework. Door locked, body submerged, the bathtub is an internal world. The figure can literally be soaked in it.
Most painted bathers are young attractive women, of course, so the gender, race, and body issues are very present. I’d love to see more varied bodies in the water. An older woman? Men? I found one modern bathing man, an illustration in pink. The other was murdered in 1793. Deceased but still a man. Included.
For my own paintings, the bathtub offers a compositional framework. Similar to Degas, I’d rather draw a woman washing her ankle than draw a woman just standing there. The bathtub edge gives a physical support system to prop the limbs at angles from the body. Triangles are formed, and the washrag adds an extra excuse for connections: a hand touches a knee, and the background becomes enclosed. Compositionally, her directed gaze helps the viewer’s eyes circulate around the drawing so flow is easier, and the scene becomes a study of a moment, not just a study of a body.
From above, the bathtub edge lines up with the canvas. Nothing need be corralled into the frame, it’s done already.
Water is a welcome compliment to the figure. Water is emotional, it’s movement. It’s also a technical challenge. The flesh interacts with water and the artist gets to play with color shifts, with solid form and translucency.
Below is a collection of bathtub paintings. I’d love to add more. No doubt I’m missing thousands, by artists I’ve forgotten or have yet to learn about. If you have a painting to add to the collection, please post it here.
Enjoy.
Jean-Léon Gérôme, Women at a Bath, Salon of 1885
Alfred George Stevens 1867
Reinhold Callmander (1840-1922)
Au Bain, 1895 Ramon Casas
Mary Cassatt – The Child’s Bath
Edgar Degas, Woman in a Tub c.1883
Leo Putz, 1911
Pierre Bonnard, Woman in a tub, 1912
Degas
Pierre Bonnard
Woman in a Tub – Edouard Manet
Degas
Everett Shinn, 1903 Girl in Bathtub
Degas
Degas
Pierre Bonnard
Pierre Bonnard, Grand nu a la baignoire, 1924
Nude in the Bath 1925 by Pierre Bonnard
Pierre Bonnard’s “Nude in the Bath,” watercolor and gouache 1940
Pierre Bonnard
The Bath 1925 by Pierre Bonnard 1867-1947
Pierre Bonnard
Pierre Bonnard
Charles Edward Perugini (1839-1918)
Roy Lichtenstein 1963
What the Water Gave Me, Frida Kahlo
Marc Chagall 1916
Brett Whiteley 1963
Pierre Bonnard
Wayne Thiebaud 1920
Hendrik Kernstens
Lee Price
Lee Price
Lee Price
Lee Price
Lee Price
Lea Price
Lee Price
Lee Price
Lee Price
Lee Price
Alyssa Monks
Adam Lupton Dane Halo
Ruthie V. Submerge, Ruthie V. 2015
Subspace, Ruthie V. 2015
Katy Schneider
Danny McGraw
Kim Cogan
Woman in the bathtub, 1968 — López García
Vincent Desiderio Soaking, 2005
Vincent Desiderio
Vincent Desiderio, The Bath, 2009, oil on linen
Juan Martinez Bengoechea
Death of Marat, David
Alik Assatrian
Shirahone Hotspring, Shinshu by Shiro Kasamatsu (1935)
Rodin’s hands feel more real: …If you’re wondering, yes I was the crazy lady of the day that became all verklempt over the Rodins. I’m told it’s a thing. Interested in hearing more thoughts like this? Take my figure drawing class, or the more sculptural Planes of the Face. I am also teaching drawing camps …
William Robinson is an Australian painter, born in 1936. His enormous paintings of the Australian landscape often involve multiple perspectives with disorienting and twisting effects. He wants his viewers to feel that they are enclosed within a landscape, having it unfold before them. “Living in the country everything moves—the seasons, the clouds, nothing is set. …
Today is the first part of a two part drawing. You can catch up tomorrow if you miss today, but don’t throw out your drawing for today! Thursday is Vocabulary day, and the word is sesquipedalian. The rare time this unusual word is introduced into conversation, it is to describe someone or something that overuses …
[image_with_animation image_url=”7856″ alignment=”center” animation=”Fade In” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] Siobhan Wilder, painting in progress When I was little, before I could write, I would pretend to write in cursive. I’d take a pencil and paper and draw repeated double loops like cursive f’s, and scrawl graceful wavy lumpy lines. That’s what cursive looked like. I’d pretend to …
In the Bathtub
Few things are as evocative, intimate, and private as moments spent bathing.
The bathtub offers an emotional framework. Door locked, body submerged, the bathtub is an internal world. The figure can literally be soaked in it.
Most painted bathers are young attractive women, of course, so the gender, race, and body issues are very present. I’d love to see more varied bodies in the water. An older woman? Men? I found one modern bathing man, an illustration in pink. The other was murdered in 1793. Deceased but still a man. Included.
For my own paintings, the bathtub offers a compositional framework. Similar to Degas, I’d rather draw a woman washing her ankle than draw a woman just standing there. The bathtub edge gives a physical support system to prop the limbs at angles from the body. Triangles are formed, and the washrag adds an extra excuse for connections: a hand touches a knee, and the background becomes enclosed. Compositionally, her directed gaze helps the viewer’s eyes circulate around the drawing so flow is easier, and the scene becomes a study of a moment, not just a study of a body.
From above, the bathtub edge lines up with the canvas. Nothing need be corralled into the frame, it’s done already.
Water is a welcome compliment to the figure. Water is emotional, it’s movement. It’s also a technical challenge. The flesh interacts with water and the artist gets to play with color shifts, with solid form and translucency.
Below is a collection of bathtub paintings. I’d love to add more. No doubt I’m missing thousands, by artists I’ve forgotten or have yet to learn about. If you have a painting to add to the collection, please post it here.
Enjoy.
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Rodin’s hands feel more real: …If you’re wondering, yes I was the crazy lady of the day that became all verklempt over the Rodins. I’m told it’s a thing. Interested in hearing more thoughts like this? Take my figure drawing class, or the more sculptural Planes of the Face. I am also teaching drawing camps …
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