''The Bacchante'' is an

oil-on-canvas Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on wood panel or canvas for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest ...

painting by the French artist Gustave Courbet, produced between 1844 and 1847. The painting's title relates the work to images of

Bacchante In Greek mythology, maenads (; grc, μαινάδες ) were the female followers of Dionysus and the most significant members of the Thiasus, the god's retinue. Their name literally translates as "raving ones". Maenads were known as Bassarids, ...

s from Greco-Roman mythology and to Renaissance paintings and sculptures on that subject. It is one of Courbet's earliest surviving works, painted when he was still under the influence of nudes by the old masters such as Correggio and his ''Venus, Satyr and Cupid''. Another female nude by Courbet from around the same time is ''Female nude sleeping by a stream'' ( Detroit Institute of Arts).

Provenance

In 1914 it was sold by the art dealers Frederik Muller & Cie of Amsterdam. Until 1968 it was in the Van Nierop collection, before passing to the Lefevre Gallery in London, from which it was acquired by doctor Gustav Rau for the foundation he was founding in Cologne. In 2011 the

musée Courbet The Musée Courbet or Courbet Museum is a museum dedicated to the French painter Gustave Courbet. It is located in Ornans in the Doubs-Franche-Comté area of France. History The Musée Courbet occupies the birthplace of French realist painte ...

displayed an exhibition showing the links between the sculptor Auguste Clésinger and Courbet, who were close friends. These links were especially seen between Clésinger's 1847 marble work ''

Woman Bitten by a Serpent ''Woman Bitten by a Serpent'' is an 1847 marble sculpture by Auguste Clésinger (1814–1883), now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. It was commissioned by the industrialist Alfred Mosselman and first exhibited in the Paris Salon in 1847, where it ...

'' and Courbet's ''The Bacchante''.''La Tribune de l'Art''
juin 2011 ccès restreint

References

Bibliography (in French)

* *Bruno Foucart, ''Courbet'', Paris, Flammarion, coll. « Les maitres de la peinture moderne », 1977 (OCLC 602545091, notice BnF no FRBNF34592962). *James H. Rubin (translated by Xavier Bernard), ''Courbet'', Phaidon, coll. « Art & Idées », 2003 (). {{DEFAULTSORT:Bacchante (Courbet), The 1840s paintings nude art Paintings by Gustave Courbet Maenads