Academic Nude Paintings
Smooth, idealised figures from myth and legend, painted for the Paris Salon.
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About Academic Nude Paintings
Academic painters trained at the École des Beaux-Arts and exhibited at the Paris Salon. They painted the nude with polished, almost invisible brushwork, usually as a goddess or nymph. Alexandre Cabanel's "The Birth of Venus" was bought by Napoleon III at the Salon of 1863. William-Adolphe Bouguereau painted his own "The Birth of Venus" in 1879, and both hang in the Musée d'Orsay.
Earlier, Ingres had painted "La Grande Odalisque" (1814), and Jean-Léon Gérôme later painted "Pygmalion and Galatea".
