Artist | Gustave Courbet (France, 1819 - 1877)

Year | 1857

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

174 x 206 cm

Location

Petit Palais → Room 5

Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine (Summer)

Exhibited at the 1857 Salon, where it unleashed a critical scandal, this work depicts young women who have come out from the city on a hot summer's day to cool off by the waterside. The realism of this highly sensual scene is manifest in the frankness of the faces and postures. Unique for its combination of a modern subject and an unusually large format for a genre scene, the work broke away from the conventions of the day. This modern subject, presented by the ever-provocative Courbet, prefigures the future popularity of the banks of the Seine, which would be celebrated by the Impressionists a generation later.