Loading cart…
No products in the cart.
In this article
Explore the artistPaul Cézanne →
One young man, almost life-size
A young man in white bathing trunks walks towards us along a riverbank, hands on hips, head bowed. Paul Cézanne painted The Bather, also known as Le Grand Baigneur, around 1885. It is one of very few paintings in which he gave a single bather the whole canvas, at nearly life-size.
The painting belongs to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
A face turned inwards
The young man looks down, lost in thought. His face is built from a few planes of colour, with dark outlines around the eyes and nose. He seems unaware of being watched.
A body built from colour
The hands rest on the hips, framing the torso. Cézanne models the flesh with patches of pink, ochre, green and blue, and draws the contours in dark, broken lines that he often repeats.
The feet are planted unevenly on the shore, one ahead of the other, caught mid-step. The pose is stiff and a little awkward, which makes the figure feel solid and real.
A landscape like a backdrop
Behind him, a river, low hills and green banks are brushed in with short, slanting strokes. The landscape is flattened, almost like a painted backdrop, so that the figure stands out against it.
Questions about The Bather
Where is it?
Museum of Modern Art, New York.
When was it painted?
Around 1885.
What is the French title?
Le Grand Baigneur.
Is it a portrait?
No. The model is anonymous; the painting is a study of a figure in a landscape.
Sources and image credit
Public-domain reproduction of The Bather (about 1885), via Wikimedia Commons. Detail images are crops of the same image; no reconstruction or upscaling.
