The Bathers
1899-1904
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
51.3 × 61.7 cm (20 3/16 × 24 1/4 in.); Framed: 69.3 × 79.7 × 8.3 cm (27 1/4 × 31 3/8 × 3 1/4 in.)
Classification
oil on canvas
Department
Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
45240
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Paul Cezanne set this idyllic view of a group of bathers in a frame of foliage. He rendered the ground, water, trees, and sky with patches of hatching that seem to register the energy he felt when painting. His primary concern, however, seems to have been striking a balance between the vigor of the bodies and the restfulness of the setting through individual poses and figure groupings—some invented, some likely derived from his other works depicting this subject. Over the course of his career, ...
About the Artist
Paul Cezanne · 1839–1906
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), born in Aix-en-Provence to a prosperous banker father, Louis-Auguste, and mother Anne-Elisabeth-Honorine Aubert, grew up in a bourgeois family that later acquired the Jas de Bouffan estate, where he painted his earliest murals. As a youth, he formed the inseparable trio "Les Trois Inséparables" with schoolmates Émile Zola and Baptistin Baille. Despite his father's wishes ...