The Bathers 1915

Maurice Prendergast created this watercolour painting, The Bathers, sometime in his lifetime. The composition is built around a cluster of female figures set against a backdrop of water and sky. The eye is immediately drawn to the vibrant use of colour, where dabs of blues, greens, and ochres create a lively, almost mosaic-like surface. Prendergast’s application of watercolour is loose and spontaneous, allowing the white of the paper to show through, which adds to the painting’s airy quality. The forms of the bathers are simplified, almost abstracted, suggesting a move away from traditional representation toward a more modern, fragmented view of the human figure. Here, Prendergast uses colour and form to construct a scene that evokes pleasure. The artist’s structural play with colour and form invites us to consider how the aesthetic experience is itself a constructed reality.