Elizabeth Cowling wrote of the Tate Gallery cast of the present sculpture, "This work is the upper part of Reclining Woman, a full-length figure made in 1931 (and reproduced complete in Cahiers d'Art the following year) which was irrevocably damaged by the bronze founder when the cast was being made. Laurens was able to save the torso and to turn it into this wonderfully animated 'fragment'...the 'Bather' in her present state has a 'baroque' quality which is new in Laurens's work, but which is encountered in many subsequent pieces, where complex, off-centre, twisting poses create a feeling of animal dynamism and erotic energy." (On Classic Ground, London, 1990, p. 134).

Claude Laurens wrote in a letter of 3 May 1973: "It was following a disastrous mistake by the founder...who completely botched his cast, that my father saved the torso of his bather and transformed it to obtain this perfectly balanced piece of sculpture."