This painting presents an unusually intimate scene from everyday life at the grand scale once reserved for formal history subjects. The tin tub and discarded nightshirt at right, along with the clothing draped neatly upon the chair and the emphatically contemporary boots, make this man less nude in a classical sense than frankly naked. The muscular tension, disheveled hair, and wet footprints on the parquet indicate the physicality of an actual body at work—having just left the bath and now vigorously toweling off—rather than an idealized body undertaking an imagined heroic action. Positioned at close proximity to the viewer—this most private of moments made public—this man, back turned and head bowed, nevertheless remains decidedly separate.

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