Twee mannen op een bank in het zwembad Possibly 1840 - 1848

Honoré Daumier's 'Two Men on a Bench in the Swimming Pool,' a drawing now housed in the Rijksmuseum, presents us with figures draped in cloth, set within a public bathhouse. Here, the motif of the draped figure takes center stage. This symbol echoes through time, from classical antiquity’s statues of gods and emperors to Renaissance paintings of biblical scenes. The way the cloth is wrapped reveals the way the body moves, a detail of the image. The covering, seemingly modest, ironically draws attention to what it conceals, almost revealing the men’s vulnerabilities. Consider how the draped form appears in religious art, often signifying humility or mourning, like the Virgin Mary's veiled head. In Daumier’s hands, this classical motif is subverted. The setting—a mundane bathhouse—juxtaposes the everyday with the symbolic weight of tradition. It is a reminder that even in moments of leisure, humans carry layers of cultural and personal history. The psychological tension between exposure and concealment, tradition and modernity, engages us in ways that extend beyond the surface of the drawing.