Musidora Bathing

Arthur Hughes's Musidora Bathing of 1848 is an early work, painted before his full absorption into Pre-Raphaelite ideals, that draws on the long tradition of Musidora as a subject in British art — a figure from James Thomson's poem The Seasons depicting a woman surprised while bathing. The subject had been treated by Gainsborough and others, making Hughes's version part of a lineage of modest nude or semi-nude bathing scenes that used the pastoral-literary pretext to engage female figure painting within the bounds of propriety. The Birmingham picture dates from the year the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded, situating it at a generational threshold in British painting. Hughes would go on to become one of the most lyrical painters of the Pre-Raphaelite circle; this early work already shows his sensitivity to the relationship between the female figure and natural setting.

Hughes paints the figure in the dappled, intimate light of a wooded bathing spot, with attention to the natural setting equal to the figure itself. The handling has the soft naturalism of his pre-Pre-Raphaelite manner rather than the jewel-bright precision of his later work. The palette is warm and green-gold, capturing the quality of filtered outdoor light.