LATE 19TH 20TH CENTURY, AFTER ETIENNE-MAURICE FALCONET

Falconet's Bather was shown at the 1757 Salon and was an immediate success. At the time it was owned by an homme de robe, Thiroux d'Espersennes, and is now in the Louvre (G. Levitine, The Sculpture of Falconet, New York, 1972, nos. 20 - 22). Falconet almost certainly adapted his pose from a painting of the same subject by François Lemoyne of 1724, which was itself very often copied in the first half of the 18th century. The Bather's popularity was such that as late as 1775 Pajou executed a bust of Madame du Barry with her hair arranged 'in the manner of Falconet's Bather' (Levitine, op. cit., pp. 31 - 33). Its success led to reproductions in all media throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.