Large Bather 1914

Raoul Dufy painted this large canvas, of what looks like an exhausted swimmer, with oil paints, sometime in the first half of the 20th century. Look at the background, it’s like a Fauvist cityscape gone haywire, blocks and chunks of buildings rendered in thick, choppy strokes. There's an odd juxtaposition between the angular geometry of the town, and the more rounded, fleshy forms of the bather, whose pose suggests a state of reverie or perhaps fatigue. The palette is rich, reds and ochres of her body contrast with the blues and greens of the surrounding landscape. What I find interesting is the way Dufy uses line – those dark outlines that carve out form, but also flatten the space, almost like stained glass. There is something very modern and synthetic about this technique, it takes cues from Cezanne, but pushes further into abstraction. It reminds me of Marsden Hartley, another painter who found freedom in the simplification of form. This piece is a reminder that art doesn’t have to choose, it can be both representation and abstraction, feeling and form.