The morning, the bathers

The Morning, the Bathers from 1772 by Vernet at the Louvre depicts women bathing in a coastal setting, combining landscape with figure study in a subject that allowed him to explore the effects of morning light on water and the human form. The bathing subject was acceptable within eighteenth-century taste as a combination of figure painting and landscape, the female figures providing both human interest and classical precedent. Vernet's oil technique carefully observed the behavior of light on water and cloud at different times of day and in different weather conditions, building atmospheric effects through careful layering of translucent glazes. The morning light — cool, clear, and fresh — creates an atmosphere of unspoiled natural beauty appropriate to the bathing subject, the women's figures partially reflected in the calm water and partially silhouetted against the brightening sky. The Louvre's holding of this work in its collection of French eighteenth-century painting recognizes Vernet's central role in the development of French landscape art in the decades before the Revolution transformed the political and cultural landscape of France.

The morning light creates fresh, clear atmospheric effects, the bathers and coastal setting rendered with Vernet's characteristic combination of naturalistic observation and poetic idealization.