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Suit up!

The bikini bathing suit made its debut on this day in 1946.

Before the bikini appeared, Robert Reid painted this sensuous canvas, The Bathers.

Impressionist painter Robert Reid was born in Massachusetts, studied in France, and lived and worked in New York City. He was derided as a "poet of frivolity" by critic Sadakichi Hartmann, but was later praised as a "decorative Impressionist."

Reid's attention to issues of color and light is evident in this bathing scene. The delicate tones of the women's flesh and draperies contrast with the darker colors used in rocks and water, while light simultaneously dapples the river's surface. Reid ingeniously echoes the pink flesh tones in highlights on the rocks in the riverbed.

Source: Charles Sullivan, ed. American Beauties: Women in Art and Literature (New York: Henry N. Abrams, Inc., in association with National Museum of American Art, 1993).

Pictured: Robert Reid, 1862–1929, The Bathers, n.d., oil on canvas, 40 5/8 x 40 1/2 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. F.M. Wigmore in memory of her husband, Francis Marion Wigmore.