Bathers
19th century
Medium
Watercolor over graphite
Dimensions
sheet: 7 3/16 x 7 1/16 in. (18.2 x 17.9 cm)
Classification
Drawings
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of William A. Putnam, 1928
Accession Number
28.216
Tags
Art Historical Context
Pierre Puvis de Chav (1824–1898), a leading Symbolist painter, created *Bathers* in the 19th century, capturing an idyllic scene of female nudes bathing amid trees. This intimate watercolor over graphite drawing, measuring just 7 3/16 x 7 1/16 inches, exemplifies Puvis's mastery of delicate media. Working on a small scale, he layered translucent watercolor washes over precise graphite underdrawings to evoke a dreamlike, ethereal quality—hallmarks of his style that bridged classicism and emerging modernism. Puvis was renowned for monumental murals adorning public buildings, where he idealized ...
About the Artist
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes · 1824–1898
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824–1898) was a French painter who became the foremost muralist of nineteenth-century France and a crucial bridge between academic tradition and modernism. Born in Lyon to a prosperous family, he studied briefly with Henri Scheffer and Thomas Couture in Paris and traveled to Italy, where the frescoes of the Italian Renaissance made a lasting impression on his artistic v...