"The older I get, the more I find that my work becomes to me an irresistible urge." Ingres's last years were particularly fruitful. Not content with reworking compositions produced both in his youth and in his mature years, he pushed his personal exploration of allegorical representation even further, leaving aside mythology and ancient references such as in La Source (The Spring). With his later version of Oedipus and the Sphinx, he completely renewed his aesthetic vocabulary, the acid tints and the idealized shapes of the painting enhancing both its erotic nature and its quality of abstraction.

After 1850, the painter produced a quantity of voyeuristic nude studies meant as preparatory sketches for his last paintings, and in particular for The Turkish Bath. The Orientalist vogue was no doubt an inspiration for such work. But these studies also reveal a deeper source of inspiration: a delight in painting infinite variations on the attitudes of a woman's body, running the gamut from the most chaste to the most daring.