Les Grandes Baigneuses (The Large Bathers) — painting by Paul Cézanne in Philadelphia Museum of Art
Cézanne's largest Bathers composition, worked on for seven years, is widely regarded as a key precursor to modern and abstract art.
Key Facts
- Years in progress
- 7 years (unfinished at death)
- Purchase price (1937)
- $110,000 USD
- First exhibited
- 1906
- Current owner
- Philadelphia Museum of Art
- Previous owner
- Leo Stein
By the Numbers
Location
Cause → Event → Consequence
Cézanne sought to move beyond traditional academic painting, deliberately avoiding contemporary trends to create works with a timeless, universal appeal. He applied the same structural techniques he used in landscapes and still lifes to the human figure, aiming to give his compositions an enduring architectural solidity.
Over approximately seven years, Cézanne developed Les Grandes Baigneuses, the largest of his Bather series, depicting abstract nude figures arranged beneath arching trees beside a river. The composition is notable for its symmetrical dimensions and the integration of the nude forms into a triangular pattern formed by the trees. The painting remained unfinished at his death in 1906 and was first exhibited that same year.
The painting was acquired in 1937 by the Philadelphia Museum of Art for $110,000 through benefactor Joseph E. Widener. It became recognized as one of the masterpieces of modern art and a direct influence on subsequent artists, including Picasso, whose Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is frequently compared to it. It helped establish the principle that painters could disregard prevailing trends in pursuit of universal, enduring form.
Work
Les Grandes Baigneuses (The Large Bathers)
Regarded as a precursor to modern and abstract art, the work influenced Picasso and later artists by demonstrating that structural form and timeless composition could take precedence over academic convention or prevailing fashion.