The figures stemmed from Cézanne’s own imagination and possibly things he remembered from childhood and not from actual observation of models. The painting of female nude figures in a pastoral setting had been done many times before by artists such as Titian and Nicolas Poussin, but their works often harked back to classical mythology, such as the depiction of the goddess Diane and her handmaidens, but in this work by Cézanne there is no mythological connotation. It was the last of the three large works to be completed. This work of art, which Cézanne started in 1897, was not completed until 1906, the year of his death and is looked upon as one of his greatest works. I say “he or she” as are we sure of the sex of these bathers? There is little or no narrative to the painting, nothing to interpret, no symbolism although we must wonder a little as to who the two figures are that are seen on the other side of the river and why did the artist add in the swimmer who breaks the surface of the river as he swims past the naked gathering. It is almost as if he or she is part of the landscape. Look at how Cézanne has depicted the angle of the back of the figure on the left which runs parallel to the tree. This can be seen in the way the faces of the bathers are without any definition and their bodies seem to merge with the landscape. All three were completed during the last ten years of Cézanne’s life and in some ways characterise his move towards abstraction. It is thought that Cézanne worked on all three paintings simultaneously. The other two large works can be found in the National Gallery, London and the Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania. This painting is housed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The featured painting in My Daily Art Display today is one of his three larger works entitled The Bathers and sometimes referred to Large Bathers ( Les Grandes Baigneuses) so as to distinguish it from some of his smaller works on the same theme. Maybe with that in mind, it is not surprising that Cézanne would recall those days pictorially, completing almost two hundred works featuring people, both male and female, bathing, sometimes in groups, sometimes singly, nearly all with landscape backgrounds. Throughout his life Cézanne would look back on his childhood and teenage years in Aix when he and his friends would spend many heady sunlit days soaking up the Provencal climate as they would go down for a swim in the nearby Arc River. This friendship was important for both of them for with their youthful romanticism they always pictured themselves having successful careers in the art world of Paris and as we now know their dreams turned to reality with Cézanne becoming a highly successful painter and Zola a highly successful writer. When he was thirteen years of age Paul Cézanne entered the Collège Bourbon, where he met and became friends with Émile Zola. His father, Louis Auguste Cézanne was the co-founder of a banking firm and Cézanne was brought up in a wealthy and prosperous environment which eventually, on his mother’s death in 1897, resulted in him receiving a large inheritance. Paul Cezanne was born on January 19, 1839, in Aix-en-Provence. The Large Bathers by Cézanne (1907) Philadelphia Museum of Art
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