Bathers 1894

Paul Cézanne painted Bathers on canvas, with oil, sometime in his later career. It presents a scene of nude figures in a landscape, a subject that was a staple of academic painting in France and elsewhere. Here, Cézanne is playing with the traditional visual codes of the old masters, but also challenging the norms of the French art establishment in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The art world was controlled by the Academy des Beaux-Arts and by the state-sponsored Salons, which set standards of taste and determined artistic careers. Cézanne’s style, with its visible brushstrokes and abstracted forms, broke with academic realism. He also challenged the established hierarchy of genres, in which history painting was seen as the highest form of art. By presenting a scene of ordinary people in nature, rather than a classical or historical subject, Cézanne questioned the values of the Academy. To understand this work better, we can look at the history of the Salons and the avant-garde movements that arose in opposition to them, by exploring period publications and critical reviews. With research we can see that Cézanne’s art embodies a progressive vision of a modern, egalitarian society.