In romantic style, Paul Cézanne painted his later wife, Hortense.
Only in the early period of his career,
he allowed his emotional feelings to be expressed in his work.
He created some 200 paintings
exploring the theme of female and male nudes
disporting in the landscape, singly and in groups,
which he will call "Bathers".
This is an example from his dark or romantic period, 1870
And these "Four Bathers", painted seven years later,
are an example from his Impressionist period.
Cézanne's "Bathers" derive in part from pastoral images of female bathers,
such as the goddess Diana and her maidens,
long favored in French art,
like this painting, in French mannerist style, of François Clouet,
called: "The Bath of Diana".
Cézanne, with some exceptions,
one of which we have seen in video I.2,
did not use direct literary sources.
This naturalist painting of five bathers, dating around 1887,
is an example from his mature period.
There is interaction between the bathers;
they seem to have a good time together.
In the same period,
Cézanne's good friend, the impressionist artist:
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
painted these "Large Bathers".
With this painting Renoir attempts to reconcile
the classicist tradition with modern painting.
Cézanne, however, developed in that period in the opposite direction,
further away from classicism.
Renoir never again devoted the for him so painstaking effort to a single work.
At the end of his life, twelve years after Cézanne's death,
Renoir painted these bathers,
much less conform nature,
showing that development in modern art was unstoppable.
During the last decade of Cézanne's life, his final period,
this "Bathers motif" culminated in three huge paintings.
This is the version of The Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania.
At the time of his death
he seems to have been at work on all three versions simultaneously.
Because of their size they were called "The Large Bathers",
"Les Grandes Baigneuses".
The three paintings epitomize his movement toward abstraction
and share numerous traits,
for example the bathers' faces are nearly devoid of detail and definition,
their bodies merge with the landscape,
and narrative content is scant or missing.
The Barnes version is the most intentionally
and densely modeled and painted,
clearly the most worked-over.
For that reason, most art historians agree
that it is the earliest version of the three.
As mentioned before,
he worked on all three versions till the very end of his life.
In 1905, in the year before his death,
Cézanne posed in front of the present version.
Interestingly, the woman on the left
lost her place in the immediate fore-ground of the painting
This version of the Large Bathers is housed
in the National Gallery in London.
There is a salient harmony of the figures with the landscape,
expressed through solid forms and strict architectonic structure
and the earth tones of the bodies.
This bather is shown from two viewpoints.
We see more of her back and bottom than under a single point of view.
This version, housing in the Philadelphia Museum of Art,
is the largest of the three;
it measures about two by two and a half meters.
Although it is unfinished,
it is considered by art history experts to be the most resolved.
Primed areas of unpainted canvas create many whitish areas,
while the figures in the lower right barely obscure earlier contours.
The compositions of the three versions of the "Large Bathers" are comparable.
The nude, androgynous figures form two groups
on each side of the foreground of the paintings and surprisingly
(Cézanne was a strong opponent of the classical style in painting)
he uses the classical pyramidal device:
an imaginary pyramid roughly outlining the line-up of each sub-group.
Notwithstanding the various poses of the figures,
the two opposing pyramids create a balance in the picture
which is reminiscent of the work of Renaissance artists.
In the Philadelphia version,
the presence of the pyramid structures is even further emphasized
by the leaning trees, forming an enormous triangular structure
acting like a great vault over the human figures.
It was Leonardo da Vinci who pioneered this composition of a human pyramid
in the "Virgin of the Rocks", his foremost early work,
showing the Madonna, the Christ Child with the infant John the Baptist and an angel,
in a rocky setting, which gives the painting its unusual name.
We see here the version of the Louvre Museum from 1483-86.
The use of a pyramidal device for the arrangement of figures
might be called one of the characteristics of the High Renaissance,
in which artists began to strive for unified compositions
giving their works a more harmonious appearance.
Michelangelo's Pietà, a sculpture made in 1498-99
is also an example for the striving for harmony in art.
The two figures are carved so as to appear in a unified composition
which forms the shape of a pyramid.
This "Madonna of the Meadow" with the Virgin Mary in a contrapposto pose,
the Christ Child and Saint John the Baptist,
is a 1506 painting by Raphael.
Like in the forgoing Renaissance works,
a sense of serenity permeates the scene.
The three figures are enclosed by an upright, symmetrical pyramid.
This complexly composed painting by Titian from 1556-59 in mannerist style,
portrays the moment in which the goddess Diana discovers
that her maid Callisto has become pregnant by Jupiter.
Complexity is notable in Mannerism.
No longer, elegance and beauty are based on good proportions or harmony.
Postures are artificial, twisted, and movement is emphasized.
Nevertheless Titian applies the pyramid device to arrange his figures in space.
Comparable to Cézanne's "Large Bathers"
Titian uses two tilted, asymmetrical pyramids,
making the scene more vivid and dynamic.
In the immediate foreground of the painting rests one of Diana's hounds.
Indeed, also in Cézanne's Barnes version of the "Large Bathers", we saw before,
on the same location in the painting lies also a dog,
although a much more domesticated specimen.
Could it be that the Barnes version,
the earliest version of the three "Large Bathers",
is inspired by Titian's "Diana and Callisto" and that Cézanne
-- who depicted dogs hardly if any -
with his dog  pays tribute to Titian as the source of inspiration?
In any case, the similarities in the composition of both paintings are evident.
This is Nicolas Poussin's depiction of a Bacchic Scene from circa 1627.
At Cupid's command...
the goat-legged shepherd-god Pan has knelt
and taken Venus, the goddess of love, on his shoulders.
A little winged putto is giving a hand,
and the group is accompanied by a sturdy faun
bearing a basket with fruit and glassware on his head and back.
Poussin has painted many scenes of nude figures in a landscape;
his work was a great inspiration for Cézanne.
In part I.2 we already mentioned the influence
of this leading painter of the classical French Baroque style.
Perhaps more than any other artist of the Baroque,
Poussin obsessively theorized about his art,
painstakingly planning every detail of his composition
in order to create maximum impact.
This painting is based on one Renaissance pyramid,
which seems perhaps too much a restriction for this vivacious scene in the open air.
A last example of a composition based on the pyramid
is the famous "Raft of the Medusa" by Théodore Géricault, dating from 1819.
Géricault was an influential pioneer of the French Romantic movement.
In this dramatic depiction we see the surviving men
of the raft of the foundered French frigate: the Medusa.
The classical rendering of the structure of the composition
stands in contrast to the turbulence of the subject,
as was more or less the case in Poussin's picture, but Géricault,
like Titian in "Diana and Callisto" based his composition
on two tilted human pyramids.
While the Bathers paintings were initially not well-received by the public,
Cézanne's fellow artists were immediately enamored of them.
When the English sculptor and artist, Henry Moore
saw one of Cézanne's versions of the "Large Bathers" in 1922,
he was stunned by its composition and said,
"If you asked me to name the ten most intense moments of visual emotion in my life,
that would be one of them."
French modern painter, Henri Matisse bought in 1899
this "Three Bathers" by Cézanne.
When he donated the painting to the Petit Palais Museum in Paris,
he wrote in a letter to the art curator:
"In the thirty-seven years I have owned this canvas,
I have come to know it quite well,
though not entirely, I hope;
it has sustained me morally in the critical moments of my venture as an artist;
I have drawn from it my faith and my perseverance;
for this reason, allow me to request that it be placed
so that it may be seen to its best advantage..."
In this remarkable loosely painted watercolor of Cézanne from his final period,
we see bathers with a hardly discernible Mont Sainte-Victoire in the background.
