Sara La Baigneuse

This nubile nude is a real swinger. In the Victorian home, every possible inch was decorated, including airspace. Bisque and china figurines were made to hang from oil lamps and chandeliers, fan and shade pulls, hanging baskets, or hooks in front of windows. Most of these figurines were both relatively small and innocent, typically cherubic children sitting on a swing. This big bare beauty is extraordinary not only because of the sensual subject, but her size; at 9 inches high and 4.25 inches wide, she is as large as she is lovely.  Of the finest china and decoration, she is superbly sculpted from her tumbled blonde tresses to her delicate bare feet. Her face is that of a Grecian goddess and her full-figured form is exposed in all its voluptuous pulchritude. 

This luscious lady also may have a literary allusion. She appears to have been inspired by the 1838 painting “Sara La Baigneuse” (Sara the Bather) by French painter Alexandre-Marie Colin (1798-1875), which now hangs in the Musée Rolin in France. In turn, Colin was inspired by Victor Hugo’s 1828 poem, “Zara the Bather,” 

In a swinging hammock lying, 

Lightly flying, 

Zara, lovely indolent, 

O'er a fountain's crystal wave

There to lave

Her young beauty. . . . 

A close up of her delicately painted face. Considering the size and weight of this swinger and her previous perilous life perched high in the air, I suspect that not many of Sara's sisters have survived to the present day!