Young girl bathing
(Jeune fille au bain)
1873; cast 1882
Medium
bronze
Measurements
(a-b) (181.9 × 117.0 × 62.7) cm (overall)
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Gift of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program, 2024
Gallery location
19th Century European Paintings Gallery
Level 2, NGV International
About this work
At a time when women artists in France received little state support, Hélène Bertaux was a pioneer in championing women’s rights. In 1897, due to her constant lobbying of the French government, women artists won the right to study at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts for the first time. Bertaux first exhibited a plaster cast of Young girl bathing at the Paris Salon of 1873, and then showed this bronze version at the 1882 Salon. The poetry inscribed on this work is taken from Victor Hugo’s Les Orientales, XIX (Eastern Poems, 1829). ‘She is there, under the foliage, awake to the slightest sound of misfortune; and blushing, from a fly’s touch, like a pomegranate in flower’. On Bertaux’s sculpture, Hugo’s fly has become a dragonfly, an insect that can bite if threatened.
Artwork Details
Place/s of Execution
Paris, France
Accession Number
2024.1029.a-b
Department
International Sculpture