Paul Chabas was born in Nantes in 1869; died in Paris in 1937. According to catalogues of the Salon, where he exhibited with great frequency from 1890 on, Chabas was a pupil of Bouguereau and of Robert Fleury.
He was known especially for his pictures of youthful nudes, posed in rather romantic natural settings and the Museum’s picture is a typical example.
His painting
September Morn (1912), won the Medal of Honor at the Paris Salon of 1912, but became infamous in the United States a year later when it was shown in a Manhattan art gallery.
Showing a nude young woman standing in the middle of a stream, the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice considered it too risqué for public display and ordered it to be removed.
Paul Émile Chabas
