Morning, The Bathers (Parts of the day, Du Barry series) - Vernet
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Description
Comparing Vernet's canvas with Carracci's "Le Bain de Diane", whose theme is identical, highlights the semiological difference between the two compositions. Whereas Carracci manages to recreate a scenic setting in the middle of nature, Vernet systematically breaks up the scene, or scatters it. The various groups occupying the space are not connected, nor do they look at or speak to each other. Instead, Vernet organizes a journey, which is also a chronology. On the left, two women emerge from the bath, while a third is still seated in the water. They are spied on by two rascals mounted on a rock above them. In the center, they are getting dressed. On the right, they start to picnic: it's already noon. A second path establishes the depth of the space: the foreground, both left and right, is still immersed in the early-morning gloom. The center is bathed in half-tone light. In the background, the sky on the left, the mountains on the right
>.1. Signed and dated "J VERNET F 1772".
2. One of four overdoors commissioned by Madame du Barry for the salon in the Louveciennes pavilion. Cat. Ingersoll Smouse, no. 945.
3. Same aqueduct and promontory as in "Les Pêcheurs" (1746, Ingersoll Smouse, no. 169) and the "Cascatelles de Tivoli" (See link). Also to be compared with the 2nd site of the Promenade Vernet described by Diderot: here, in the background, we find the arches of the bridge under which the waterfall empties into the lake ("under these arches descended with great noise a wide torrent, its waters interrupted, accelerated, hastened towards the deepest beach of the site"). According to Diderot, however, the bridge is a "wooden factory", whereas this painting depicts a stone aqueduct. The two figures climbing the left rock in the background to observe the scene could have been imagined by Diderot as representations of himself with the abbé: "I advance along the shore of the lake, formed by the waters of the torrent, to the middle of the
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Technical Data
Notice #000772
