Female Nude: La Source

Medium: Oil On Board
Size: 33 x 23.2 cm (13 x 9.1 in)
Signed: Signed: H Lehmann

Oil on board: 30.5 x 40.6 cm
Sight: 23.2 x 33 cm
Framed: 45 x 54.5 cm

This picture of a classically posed and idealized female nude standing near a seaside grotto appears to be related to a larger multi-figural composition called Les Baigneuses which Lehmann painted while in Rome and exhibited at the 1842 Salon. That picture, which is now lost, but known through two engravings, represents four bathers relaxing in an idyllic waterside grove and was inspired by a passage in Victor Hugo's Les feuilles d'automne.

Our nude is identical to the blonde standing figure in Les Baigneuses with the only difference being that the figure in the Salon picture is partially draped. Despite its small size, the present picture, with its delicate chiaroscuro and porcelain-like finish, does not seem to be a study for the Salon picture, but rather a fully elaborated variation. With its different background of a seaside grotto, this is an independent composition which recalls other works by Lehmann, such as Les Océanides pleurant le sort de Prométhée, Au bord de la mer, Ariane abandonnée dans l'ile de Naxos and Au bord de la mer, La tristesse de Calypso. In painting this Venus-like figure, Lehmann was also clearly inspired by Ingres' La Source (Louvre), conceived in about 1820 but not completed until 1856. In setting the pale blonde figure against the dark somewhat mysterious background Lehmann has given a northern inflection to Ingres' typical French neoclassicism.