Ingres' The Turkish Bath

John Berger's Ways of Seeing makes many suggestions about how to look at works from the great period of Western oil painting (1500-1900). He argues that the traditional ways in which art history looked at painting involved a great deal of mystification, that is, "the process of explaining away what might otherwise be evident" (Berger 15-16). In Berger's view mystification involves explanations of the meanings of pictures, the reasons why they were painted, and what they meant to the painters and the owners. Analyses that mystify cover up certain aspects of this art; specifically those related to domination--domination of women by men, of the weak by the powerful, and of the not-rich by the rich. A closer look at one picture demonstrates how careful interrogation of what is in front of the viewer brings out information and possible meanings that are not evident from the analyses of art historians of the past. This essay examines a painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres called The Turkish Bath (Bain Turc) and compares this reading of the painting with an account of it written by the art historian Walter Friedlaender in 1952.

Ingres' painting was originally a rectangular composition (1859) that was revised in 1863 when he turned it into a round work with a diameter of 42.5 inches (108 cm). The painting, which is at the Louvre Museum in Paris, was oil on canvas on wood. It provides examples of some of the ideas Berger discussed in relation to the representation of wo

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Category: Arts - I