Bathers (Les Grandes Baigneuses) Paul Cézanne 1894-1905 Medium and support: Oil on canvas Dimensions: 127.2 x 196.1 cm National Gallery, London
Cézanne painted bathers from the 1870s onwards, including numerous compositions of male and female bathers, singly or in groups. Late in life, he painted three large-scale female bather groups. In addition to the National Gallery's painting, they are now in the Barnes Foundation, Merion, PA, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He seems to have been at work on all three simultaneously at the time of his death.
In such works, Cézanne was reinterpreting a long tradition of paintings with nude figures in the landscape by artists such as Titian and Poussin. While the subjects of their works were taken from classical myths, Cézanne did not use direct literary sources. Instead, his central theme was the harmony of the figures with the landscape expressed through solid forms, strict architectonic structure, and the earth tones of the bodies. When exhibited in 1907, this painting became an inspiration for the nascent Cubist movement; both Picasso and Matisse took a strong interest in it.
With each version of the bathers, Cézanne moved away from the traditional presentation of paintings, intentionally creating works which would not appeal to the novice viewer.[9] He did this in order to avoid fleeting fads and give a timeless quality to his work, and in so doing paved the way for future artists to disregard current trends and paint pieces which would appeal equally to all generations.[9] The abstract nude females present in Large Bathers give the painting tension and density.[9] It is exceptional among his work in symmetrical dimensions, with the adaptation of the nude forms to the triangular pattern of the trees and river.[10] Using the same technique as employed in painting landscapes and still lifes, Large Bathers is reminiscent of the work of Titian and Peter Paul Rubens.[11] Comparisons are also often made with the other famous group of nude women of the same period, Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.
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