The Bathers by Paul Cézanne - 1894-1905

A beautiful & complex painting at London’s National Gallery.

Firstly, I love the subject matter - recalling the charm of summer afternoons, friendships, swimming, lounging. The viewer isn’t directly engaged by the painting. We are intruding, almost. (I have already written about this painting in my write-up of the “After Impressionism” exhibition).

Then, there is a wonderful sense of harmony, a “balance”, to the painting - against the obvious verisimilitude. The colours of the ground and skin, the blues of the sky and shade. I like how the ladies resemble plants and flower petals. 

The difference between Cézanne and his fellow Impressionists is that, while they were looking at the immediate effect of light, he was looking at how he/we perceived objects. Every brushstroke is clearly deliberate and economic - clearly the result of some deep thought.

To paint a harmonious picture, he needed to paint the ladies in a way that relates “naturally” to their environment. And for Cezanne, they appear solid while obeying the proper rules of light (the impressionist inheritance) and a broader harmony. 

Cézanne wasn’t interested in imitating the real world. He wanted to reassemble the elements of the three-dimensional world on a flat canvas. In other words, to represent the real spatial relationships between objects without breaking up the flatness of the canvas. Rather like bringing a sheet of paper to a window pane and tracing what you see outside. The cubists took this idea and sought different perspectives.

He challenges the Renaissance perspective about how we have come to understand that third-dimension; and does so in compelling and beautiful way.