Jean-Louis Forain, 'The Tub', about 1886-7

Jean-Louis Forain trained as a printmaker. He worked mainly on satirical illustrations for Paris journals, showing an incisive wit. Forain became a friend of the Impressionists and began to paint. He was mostly influenced by the realism of Manet and Degas.

Degas said of Forain that ‘he painted with his hand in my pocket’. Since their friendship was close and lasting, he presumably meant this as friendly banter rather than an insult. At the 1886 Impressionist exhibition, Degas showed a series of pastel nudes of women washing or drying themselves. Almost all of them were portrayed from behind and many with red hair, as in the Gallery’s After the Bath, a Woman Drying Herself.

Shortly afterwards, Forain painted a number of pictures on the same theme, including The Tub. Degas’s women are ungainly but easy in their own bodies. In contrast, Forain’s bather seems daintier and more consciously posed.

She steps into the wide basin, reaching to take a bar of soap from a bowl on the shelf. She is slim, with swelling buttocks and the strong legs perhaps of a dancer. Forain shared Degas’s interest in drawing the ballet girls of the Opéra, one of whom may have been the model. The hand grasping the soap is rather a blur. The other is held out, light and delicate, in a position often held by dancers in a ballet pose. Her dark red hair is pulled back with a comb. Her ear catches the light, her cheek is in shadow and her tip-tilted nose is just visible.

Bowl, ewer and shelf are in matching powder blue with a tall mirror behind them. A glass scent bottle with a long neck and ornate stopper glints in the light. The young woman’s crisp, white robe is tossed over a spindly gilt chair. The hint of lace at cuff and neck suggests that it deserved to be treated less casually.

The other figure in the picture is far less detailed. She kneels, supporting herself on the rim of the basin. The jug in her other hand seems too heavy for her. Her long gown is a darker blue than the bathroom furniture but in harmony with it. Around her waist is a black sash and a brooch is at her neck. She is well dressed for a servant; she also has red hair.

Like Degas, Forain caught the moment, but the result is different, except perhaps for the hair. At that time, a woman portrayed with red hair was often presumed to be a sex worker. Dancers at the Opéra frequently augmented their meagre pay in this way. If so, Forain’s young woman appears to be more successful at her calling than Degas’s ‘honest, simple folk’ in their shabby rooms. Although this is the traditional interpretation of the scene, we do not know who the woman is or why she is bathing.

Maybe this alone signifies the difference of vision between the two artist friends. One was a loner, who saw his world in its true light. The other enjoyed the high life of the belle époque (1890–1914) and wore his talents with an ironic smile.