A captivating and playful oil on panel by the French artist Louis Dauvergne (1828-1899). This little gem of a painting depicts a spirited young bather preparing to snatch her clothes after a skinny dip, all while an elderly plein air artist sits blissfully unaware just yards away.The work is imbued with a wonderful sense of narrative poetry and light. Dauvergne’s mastery is most evident in the rendering of the bather’s skin tones, which glow with a pearlescent quality against the textured bark of the willow tree—a testament to his training under the great Thomas Couture.Louis Dauvergne was a figure of contradictions. The son of a landowner, he famously rejected his inheritance of the family farm to pursue a life of art in Paris. There, he joined the elite studio of Thomas Couture, where he studied alongside Puvis de Chavannes and Édouard Manet.Possessing a private income, Dauvergne was a ''painter’s painter'' who worked primarily for his own pleasure. This financial indepe...