Jean-Louis Forain

Catalogue entry

Jean-Louis Forain 1852-1931

N05294 The Tub c.1886-7

Inscribed 'à M. Cousin | j.l. forain' b.l.
Oil on canvas, 25 3/4 x 21 1/2(65.5 x 54.5)
Bequeathed by Sir Hugh Walpole 1941
Prov: [?M. Cousin]; G. Manoury, Paris; with Leicester Galleries, London; Sir Hugh Walpole, London, 1927
Exh: Contemporary French Paintings, Leicester Galleries, London, July-August 1927 (21) as 'The Tub'; Hugh Walpole's Collection, French Gallery, London, May-June 1937 (37); The Tate Gallery's Wartime Acquisitions, National Gallery, London, April-May 1942 (30); Forain (1852-1931), Browse and Darby Ltd., London, May-June 1978 (10)
Repr: Mervyn Levy, Painting for All (London 1958), facing p.17 in colour (detail)

This picture appears to have been painted a year or so later than 'The Widower' (Musée du Louvre), which was exhibited at the Salon of 1885. It would seem to have been inspired by Degas, who exhibited at the Impressionist exhibition in 1886 a series of pastels of 'nudes of women bathing, washing, drying, wiping themselves, combing their hair or having it combed'.

It was possibly either the picture 'The Toilet' lent by M. Petitdidier to La Libre Esthétique, Brussels, in March-April 1912 (119) and to Forain's retrospective exhibition Oeuvres de J.-L. Forain at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, in January-February 1913 (56) or 'Woman at her Toilet' lent to the latter (43) by M. Leclanché. There was also a painting by Forain called 'Woman at her Toilet' in the 8th Impressionist exhibition of May-June 1886 (29).

Published in:
Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, pp.222-3, reproduced p.222

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