Three Girls and River1907
Louis M. Eilshemius is best known for his romanticized and often erotically charged landscapes that contain nude women or nymphs. More about this work
About this work
Louis M. Eilshemius is best known for his romanticized and often erotically charged landscapes that contain nude women or nymphs. In Three Girls and River, three nude women relax in a bucolic setting with lush trees and a babbling river. The figures seem to be together, but they do not interact and appear blissfully uninhibited by each other and their surroundings. By placing the dreamlike figures in a picturesque yet familiar setting, Eilshemius blurred the line between reality and fantasy.
Text from the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
How it was made
- Oil paint
- Pigment ground in a drying oil, usually linseed. It dries slowly, so painters could blend on the canvas, build up thin translucent glazes, and rework a picture over weeks. Canvas replaced wooden panels in the 1500s because it is lighter and can be rolled.
Louis M. Eilshemius
New Jersey, 1864–1941
Eilshemius studied in New York and at the Académie Julian in Paris and travelled widely, as far as Samoa, painting romantic landscapes and nudes that found few admirers. Marcel Duchamp singled out his work at the 1917 exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, and modernist circles later championed him, but he had stopped painting around 1921 and spent his last decades writing eccentric, self-promoting pamphlets and letters.
Written by Ochre Editions.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The Smithsonian American Art Museum has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 1980.34.3
- Credit
- Courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum
- Type
- Painting
- Department
- Painting and Sculpture
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
Report this work
More by Louis M. Eilshemius
All their works
Close in colour
