The large bathers by cezanne

The Large Bathers series - the most influential example of figure painting of the turn of the century - consists of three similar pictures of female bathing groups - one in the National Gallery, London; one in the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and one in the Barnes Foundation, PA. Cezanne seems to have been working on all three at the time of his death.

The bathers are called 'large' simply to distinguish it from Cezanne's many smaller paintings on the same subject. These three paintings constitute Cezanne's personal interpretation of the long established tradition of depicting female nudes in the landscape, popularized by artists such as Giorgione Sleeping Venus, Titian Venus of Urbino, Correggio Jupiter and Io, Poussin and others.

Cezanne depicted the theme of the bathing party many times over several decades. The subject apparently had its source in his memories of bathing with his male friends as a youth in Aix, but it became an obsessive preoccupation towards the end of his life, culminating in the three monumental Large Bathers London and Philadelphia.

The large bathers by cezanne: The earliest dates from the

This whole sequence of Bather paintings had an enormous influence on younger vanguard artists - in particular, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque - for whom Cezanne was the modern incarnation of the Great Tradition. Cezanne told Emile Bernard that he longed to do "a Poussin done again entirely from nature and not constructed from notes, drawings and fragments of studies.

At last a real Poussin, done in the open air, made of colour and light", but that the "endless difficulties of finding men and women who would be willing to undress and remain still in the poses I had decided upon", of transporting a huge canvas to the outdoor site, and then of uncertain weather, had, not surprisingly, obliged him to postpone his plan.

Although Cezanne's Bather paintings emulate many famous classical and Renaissance works of art which depict complex groups of male or female nudes outdoors, Poussin does seem to be a significant source for all the Large Bathers. The frieze-like arrangement of the figures, the rhythmic succession of triangular shapes into which they are ordered, and the use of the trees and of bands of grass and water to articulate the space and control the composition, are clearly reminiscent of Poussin's method of composing his landscapes.

But the colour, lighting and energetic, sketchy handling are, of course, the result of Cezanne's lifelong experience of working outdoors. The picture as a whole realises the synthesis of nature and art which was his goal. Although most of the Old Master depictions of female nudes in the landscape were taken from classical myths, Cezanne avoided the use of direct literary sources, preferring to focus his attention exclusively on the harmony of the figures with the landscape, as expressed in the combination of solid forms and precise architectonic structure.

Note the repetition of geometric motifs, including triangles, circles, cones and cylinders. This is anything but a luscious, sensual Venetian image. In the foreground, we might be in a classicized Arcadian landscape, but on the far shore we can see the back of a horse and a man walking away from us towards a church, and we realize that this is modern France.

The large bathers by cezanne: The Bathers (French: Les Grandes Baigneuses)

Harris: [] And all painted where huge areas of the canvas are unfinished. Outlines of forms are unstable and repeated and seem to move and shift. He may be inspired by it, he may be referencing it. Rideau, Cruchon et Compotier. Mont Sainte-Victoire seen from Bellevue. Kitchen Table. Still Life with Apples and Oranges. Mont Sainte-Victoire, A Modern Olympia.

Still Life with Basket of Apples. Portrait of Chocquet. Portrait of Gustave Geffroy. Essay Fauvism. Essay Henri Matisse Essay Post-Impressionism. Chronology France, A. How Lithographs are Made.

The large bathers by cezanne: The abstract nude females

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