{"id":88040,"date":"2021-09-20T15:12:09","date_gmt":"2021-09-20T13:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svetslik.si\/uncategorized\/the-bathers-2\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T12:55:04","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T10:55:04","slug":"the-bathers-2","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/svetslik.si\/en\/paul-cezanne\/the-bathers-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul C\u00e9zanne \u2013 The Large Bathers (Philadelphia)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Large Bathers \u2013 the canvas C\u00e9zanne painted for seven years<\/h2>\n

The Large Bathers from the Philadelphia Museum of Art is the largest canvas Paul C\u00e9zanne ever painted and the last great work of his life. Above a group of female nudes the trees close into a high Gothic arch, and behind them a blue river and a distant town open out. Our hand-painted reproduction on canvas brings this monumental scene into your home, painted in oil on canvas with the blue that served C\u00e9zanne as the material of space.<\/p>\n

Seven years of work and an unfinished end<\/h3>\n

C\u00e9zanne worked on this canvas for about seven years, from around 1900 until his death in 1906, and never declared it finished. In several places the bare ground of the canvas shows through the paint \u2013 the painter did not fill those gaps in. That is exactly what made the work so influential: the next generation saw in it a permission for a painting not to be a smoothly finished surface. Pablo Picasso knew The Large Bathers and treated them as a starting point for his own work; the connection with Les Demoiselles d\u2019Avignon<\/em> of 1907 is regularly cited by art history, though it is a reading by later writers rather than a documented statement by Picasso.<\/p>\n

Three large bather canvases, not one<\/h3>\n

C\u00e9zanne carried the large bathers subject through in three large versions, which hang today in three collections: the Philadelphia Museum of Art (this one, the largest), the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia and the National Gallery in London. All three show a group of bathers beside water, but the arrangement of the figures and the shape of the arch of trees differ in each. The version you see here is the only one in which the trunks lean in from both sides into an almost symmetrical tent above the scene.<\/p>\n

What you see on the canvas<\/h3>\n

The figures are not portraits and are not painted from a live model \u2013 in his late years C\u00e9zanne drew from memory, from his own early sketches and from the sculptures in the Louvre. The bodies are simplified into planes and outlined shapes that match the rhythm of the trees; some of the bathers have no drawn faces. On the far side of the water stand a small figure and the tower of a settlement. The original is painted in oil on canvas and measures 210.5 \u00d7 250.8 cm; it is held by the Philadelphia Museum of Art.<\/p>\n

A monumental subject for a large wall<\/h3>\n

C\u00e9zanne\u2019s largest composition we paint by hand, plane by plane; a print would flatten it into uniformity. Besides the ten sizes we paint it to your measurements \u2013 with a subject this wide that is often the best choice. It works best above a sofa or in a room with a high ceiling. We show you the frame with a realistic 3D preview. Among our reproductions on canvas<\/strong> you will find C\u00e9zanne\u2019s other compositions with nudes: The Large Bathers (Barnes)<\/a>, The Bather<\/a> and The Abduction<\/a>.<\/p>\n