Maillol, originally a painter, drawer, engraver and tapestry weaver, took up sculpture in 1896 when he learned wood-carving. He used boxwood in particular, a variety commonly used in carving, whose density gives the artist the advantage of being able to work intricately using all methods of carving. The artist can thus match substance with his visual ideas thanks to this material that he was already familiar with.

Inspired by the Gauguin sculptures he so admired, he began to create bas-reliefs, then his first three-dimensional sculptures, between 1898-1899. Standing Bather is the most important of the two 3D sculptures. Carved directly from the boxwood, it is a “direct cut”.

Around 1900, Maillol also discovers the pleasure of modeling clay. And, as a work is never finished for an artist, he has his practitioner Jean Van Dongen (1883-1970) make a stamping of the Baigneuse in 1920, and produces three more examples of the sculpture in clay, each of which he reworks himself.

In sculpture, he admires Rodin and his success is immediate. Maillol establishes himself as the
sculptor of the Eternal Woman in the complete expression of her fullness and beauty. His models present an accuracy and a stunning monumentality, or the capacity to appear more important than they are in reality: they fill the space, as is the case of this one here that foreshadows Méditerranée, Pomone, or l’Hommage à Cezanne.

The range in numerous materials of a work is a recurring practice in sculpture. After wood and clay, Maillol also casts bronzes of the Baigneuse debout using modified and smoothed casts, which have a less vibrant epidermis than that of terra cotta and wood.

Maillol’s clay sculptures—which generally date from his lifetime and which he reworked himself—are more rare than his sometimes posthumous bronzes, forming an approximate proportion of one to ten.