In this artwork, Corinth explores the Bible story of Susanna in the Bath, a theme that has been popular and frequently depicted in visual arts.

She extends her right hand to a white towel lying on the floor, covering the upper part of her breast with her right arm, revealing the nipple and a section of her thigh.

Susanna's clothing, consisting of a white undergarment and a vibrant robe fashioned from red and gold fabric, is scattered across the bench where she is seated and the floor below.

[4] He enrolled in classes conducted by renowned painters such as Franz Defregger, Wilhelm Trübner, and Ludwig von Löfftz, aligning himself with the currents of naturalism.

There, he underwent a three-month apprenticeship under Paul Eugène Gorge,[5] followed by his move to Paris in October 1884, where he spent three years and enrolled in the private Académie Julian.

[5] The creation of Susanna im Bade followed this period, taking place in the year after his father's demise, while Corinth was still situated in Königsberg in East Prussia.

[5] The painting was accepted because it combined a nude portrayal with a historical scene, which matched the taste of the public and the Salon jury during that period.

[6] In his self-biography, Corinth did not mention the painting, but he does describe his joy at the award for the Pietà:[8] "I should not find so much, for my father had always managed carefully, also the property was mainly laid out in a few houses.

"In 1891, he returned to Munich accordingly and concentrated on his further career as a painter, absorbing the various current trends in the vein of Klinger, Hans Thoma, and Arnold Böcklin, which brought more and more color to paintings previously dominated by tonal browns.

[5] Susanna im Bade holds significance as one of Corinth's early works, marking one of his initial forays into selecting a motif rooted in religious themes.

In this artwork, he merged it with his ongoing fascination for portraying female nudes, a focus that had been present since the early stages of his career and was particularly prominent during his apprenticeship years.

According to Maria Makela, Corinth consistently employed the portrayal of mythological, literary, and biblical narratives to express broader social and political concerns.

[2][13] Sevcik argues that Susanna's motif yielded more than a mere "pretext for the mobilization of nude painting, an element of significance to him."

[6] The motif of Susanna holds a place within a longstanding pictorial tradition that takes root in the Renaissance and Baroque eras, continuing its influence into the modern period.

"[2] According to Sevcik's observations in 2022, the primary distinction lies in Corinth's 'loose brushstrokes': 'Corinth's incarnate matter flickers, the draperies flow, the ground sparkles like a surface of water.

'[6] According to Bärnreuther's interpretation, "a deeper iconographic analysis is unnecessary" because the added accessories, including the heads of the ancients and the curtain, are incidental and anecdotal, creating an allusion to the subject.

[2] While Corinth's early religious-themed works draw formal and compositional inspiration from diverse schools where he apprenticed, alongside lessons from the Old Masters, they are also infused with the influences of Naturalism.

[9] This artistic approach, deviating from the conventional 'scholarly painting,' had already emerged in Germany and France, notably through the likes of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Anselm Feuerbach, and was further exemplified in naturalistic and realistic historical depictions as well as paintings rooted in literary models, as seen in the works of Gustave Courbet, Max Klinger, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, and Franz von Stuck.

'[9] Here, a parallel is drawn with the Pietà, where the portrayal of the deceased Christ's body similarly adheres to a highly realistic and less idealized representation, shifting away from typical iconography such as the halo.

According to Friedrich Gross, he owed his "reputation as a particularly sensual painter akin to Rubens [...] to his nudes, both the depictions of models and the figures of mythological and symbolic combination.

"[15] In this pursuit, Corinth, similar to Manet and Klinger, stood in opposition to the prevailing academic standard of beauty in the 19th century.

In 1955, Gert von der Osten noted that Corinth's deeper engagement with nude painting commenced during his tenure at the Académie Julian.

This period yielded numerous sketches and studies, although a significant large-scale nude painting on which he was working remains lost.

[16] As van der Osten observed, it was during this phase that Corinth initially infused the female form with a sense of a 'living breathing being,' a quality that would persist in his subsequent works.

'[16] While earlier works like Das Komplott and others retained strong Munich school influences, with Susanna im Bade for the first time, the anecdotal genre piece was transcended.

Likewise, it refrains from the excessive tension that Wilhelm Leibl had filled into his Wildschützen (Game shooters), a work culminating in tragic failure.

[16] In his portrayal, Corinth chose a scene from the story where the two elders observe and eavesdrop on the woman in the intimate moment of the bath, hiding behind a curtain and remaining invisible to the sitter.

This technique is reminiscent of Rembrandt's portrayal of Susanna and can also be seen in works like Paulus Bor's Sitzenden Badenden beim Ofen (Seated Bathers by the Stove).

According to Berend-Corinth's catalog raisonné, the first version of the painting was first privately owned by Alice Schurz in Wiesbaden and later in the art collection of the city of Königsberg.

In 1996, it was part of an extensive retrospective of Lovis Corinth's work at the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the Haus der Kunst in Munich, as well as the Tate Gallery in London, and the Saint Louis Art Museum.