Paul Cezanne, Bathers series, c.1888-1902

From the National Gallery:

Cézanne painted bathers from the 1870s onwards, including numerouscompositions of male and female bathers, singly or in groups. Late in life, he painted three large-scale female bather groups. In addition to the National Gallery’s painting, they are now in the Barnes Foundation, Merion, PA, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He seems to have been at work on all three simultaneously at the time of his death.

In such works, Cézanne was reinterpreting a long tradition of paintings with nude figures in the landscape by artists such as Titian and Poussin. While the subjects of their works were taken from classical myths, Cézanne did not use direct literary sources. Instead, his central theme was the harmony of the figures with the landscape expressed through solid forms, strict architectonic structure, and the earth tones of the bodies. When exhibited in 1907, this painting became an inspiration for the nascent Cubist movement; both Picasso and Matisse took a strong interest in it.

Bathers by Kazimir Malevich, 1908

There’s something about this painting by Malevich that reminds me of a Cezanne piece with the same subject, though Cezanne painted many different versions of bathing scenes, with various colour schemes and compositions. But in this particular work by Cezanne, both painters use white and crisp light blues to create the bathing figures, and surround them in a patchy background of warm earthy colours. Yet Cezanne’s bathers are dynamic and characterised: in contrast, Malevich’s are faceless and still.

Four Bathers by Paul Cezanne, c.1888-90

Bathers by a Lagoon by David Boyd, 1970. I adore Australian Boyd’s cheerful, charming, illustrative work and he is on my list for Artist of the Week, so keep an eye out!