Cézanne's Bathers
Bathers in a landscape were one of Cézanne's lifelong subjects, ending in three large canvases of his final years.
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About the series
Paul Cézanne painted groups of bathers throughout his career, in oil, watercolour and drawings. The figures, male or female, are set among trees beside water. He did not paint them from life outdoors but built them from memory, studies and older art, treating the bodies and landscape as one arranged composition.
The subject ends in three large canvases known as The Large Bathers, worked on in his last years until his death in 1906. The biggest is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with the trees arching over the figures like a vault. The other two are in the National Gallery in London and the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Smaller bather paintings from earlier years hang in the Musée d'Orsay and other museums. These works strongly influenced Picasso, Matisse and the Cubists.
The Large Bathers are wide and need space. Smaller group scenes from the 1870s and 1890s fit a standard wall and pair well together.
