FRANÇOIS DIDAY | LANDSCAPE WITH A LAKE AND BATHERS, 1850

Private collection, Switzerland

Together with Alexandre Calame, Diday was the foremost landscape artist of his day and played an important role as a teacher of the next generation of Genevan painters. He painted several different versions of this composition, the earliest of which, dating to 1837, is in the Collection Pictet, Geneva. The 1837 version was so successful that the artist painted another four versions the following year, one of which, entitled Le Lac de Brienz, was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1842 and its success led to the Swiss artist being awarded the Legion of Honour. The popularity of the subject of female bathers goes back to the Renaissance; it allowed artists to depict nudes in a landscape setting. In the present example Diday combines a dramatic mountainous lake setting with the lively scene in the right foreground.