Musidora Bathing (study)

James Thomson's 1726–1730 poem The Seasons introduced Musidora as a shy bather surprised by her admirer Damon—from the Summer section—and the scene became enormously popular with British painters, offering a classical alibi for the nude in a pastoral setting. Hogarth, Wright of Derby, and many others had painted Musidora before Hughes undertook this study in 1848, the year the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was constituted. The subject suited Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics: literary source, emotional narrative, natural outdoor setting, and the challenge of rendering the nude with both poetry and precision. That this is identified as a study suggests Hughes was working through compositional and anatomical challenges while still a Royal Academy Schools student. The study's early date predates the fully developed Pre-Raphaelite technique of painting on a white ground. Birmingham Museums Trust preserves multiple early Hughes works documenting his formation as an artist.

Oil on canvas with the academic competence of a skilled student: careful tonal modelling of the figure against a naturalistic landscape setting. The paint surface is likely more conventionally academic than Hughes's later Pre-Raphaelite works, using tonal chiaroscuro taught in the Schools rather.