Bathers1890–1900
Nude bathers stand and lounge by the water beneath trees, a theme Cézanne explored for decades in paintings, drawings and watercolours. More about this work
About this work
Nude bathers stand and lounge by the water beneath trees, a theme Cézanne explored for decades in paintings, drawings and watercolours. This colour lithograph, made in the late 1890s at the urging of the dealer Ambroise Vollard, who was publishing albums of artists’ prints, is one of only a handful of prints Cézanne produced. The figures are reduced to simple, sculptural forms, and the colour, printed from separate stones, is laid in light, open touches that echo his watercolours.
Written by Ochre Editions.
What you’re looking at
A work made of color lithograph on ivory laid paper.
Description from the Art Institute of Chicago.
How it was made
- Lithograph
- Drawn on limestone with a greasy crayon or ink. The stone is kept damp, and the oily printing ink clings only to the drawing. Invented in the 1790s, it let artists print exactly as they drew.
- Laid paper
- Handmade on a mould of close-set wires, which leave fine parallel lines you can see when the sheet is held to the light.
Paul Cézanne
French, 1839–1906 · Born and died in Aix-en-Provence.
Cézanne divided his life between Paris and his native Aix-en-Provence. Encouraged by his schoolfriend Émile Zola and later by Pissarro, with whom he painted at Pontoise and Auvers in the 1870s, he showed at the first and third Impressionist exhibitions. He then withdrew to Provence and worked towards a more structured art, building form from patches of colour in still lifes, bathers and repeated views of Mont Sainte-Victoire. Younger painters, Picasso and Braque among them, saw him as a founder of modern painting.
Written by Ochre Editions.
Post-Impressionism
Artists who kept Impressionism's colour but pushed towards structure, symbol and feeling.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The Art Institute of Chicago has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 1932.1297
- Credit
- Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago
- Type
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
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More by Paul Cézanne
All their works
Close in colour
