Description
The Bather – a solitary figure before the water
This young man standing with his hands on his hips before a bright sheet of water is one of the best known single figures in Cézanne’s output, and one of the few of his works where the whole weight of the scene rests on a single person. The canvas is held by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Our hand-painted reproduction on canvas brings this quiet subject into your home, painted in oil on canvas.
Painted from a photograph, not from a model
In his later years Cézanne worked almost never from a live model. For this figure, researchers believe, he used an older photograph of a young man in bathing trunks – and the pose, relaxed in the photograph, he turned on canvas into something almost solemn. That is the reading of art history, not a statement by the painter.
A figure without a story
The bather is doing nothing. He is not stepping into the water, not drying himself, not talking to anyone; his gaze is turned down. Cézanne removed from the subject everything that would make it an event and left only body, water and light – which is why the figure reads more like a sculpture than like a portrait.
What you see on the canvas
The background is divided into a few broad bands: pale shore, bluish water, hills and sky. The body is built from the same planes as the landscape, so that figure and space emerge from one substance. The original is painted in oil on canvas, measures roughly 127 × 97 cm and was made between 1885 and 1887.
A calm figure for a calm room
Every copy is painted by hand, in oil on canvas – not a print but a genuine work of art. It is available in ten sizes, and for a wall that is not standard we will paint it to your measurements. The cool blue-grey scale does well in a bedroom or in the space outside a bathroom. With our app’s 3D frame preview you can see the finished look before you decide. Among our reproductions of famous paintings you will find Cézanne’s other bather compositions: The Large Bathers (Barnes), The Large Bathers (Philadelphia) and Afternoon in Naples.
- Subject: The Bather, Paul Cézanne, 1885–1887, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York
- Technique: hand-painted painting, oil on canvas, reproduction
- Sizes: 10 formats, stretched on a wooden stretcher frame on request, or made to your measurements
- Fact: researchers believe the figure was painted from a photograph rather than from a live model
