In a letter to his countryman Bourdelle, who introduced him to
sculpture, Maillol describes the pleasure he takes in watching
the waves: “I do studies of the sea. It feels strange painting
the sea, you never know what colour it is.” So when he decided
to paint a nude, Maillol naturally made her a bather. The
composition follows a horizonless spatial schema that follows
the pattern of the decorative spirals that are a legacy of
Japanism. The curves of the wave whose foam envelops the bather
reflect the waves in her hair. This fusional representation of
the bather and the marine element evokes the very sensual Woman
in the Wave (1868, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art) by
Gustave Courbet, whose pictorial power Maillol admired. The
harmonious curves of the nude treated in a global manner fit
neatly into the nearly square format of the canvas, like a
metope in a Greek temple. The choice of matt paint is also a
reference to architecture and more precisely mural painting, an
area where Puvis de Chavannes was