Image source: en.wikipedia.org
Les Grandes Baigneuses (The Bathers)
Artist:Paul Cezanne
| Support Type: | Canvas |
| Paint Type: | Oil Paint |
| Current Location: | Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA |
| Location History: | 1898-1905: Created by Cézanne's studio in Aix-en-Provence, France, and remained there until 1906, till his death. 1907: Parisian Art dealer Ambroise Vollard purchased from Cezanne's son. Early 1920s: Auguste Pellerin, Paris. Stayed in the family till 1936. 1936: Sent to New York through Wildenstein & Co. as an agent for Pellerin. 1937: Purchased by the Philadelphia Museum of Art for $110,000. Facilitated by a museum benefactor, Joseph E. Widener. |
This is the largest, the last, and in many ways, the most ambitious work from Cézanne’s lifelong exploration of the time-honored theme of nudes in a landscape. It is also, perhaps, in its unfinished state, the purest and most serene witness to the man whom Paul Gauguin described as spending “entire days on mountaintops reading Virgil,” dreaming of wooded glades populated with beautiful figures who, if not exactly participants in a narrative as such, are full of animation and interaction. Perhaps it is its grand nobility—its authority as something beyond time, “like art in the museums,” as Cézanne said—that made it so attractive to many artists.
Information Compiled by
Rhydhm Chheda