Lot Essay
Cézanne painted nearly 200 bather pictures during his life and the subject was probably the most important progressive theme and consistent focus of his creative energy. John Rewald has written, 'Cézanne's lifelong preoccupation with compositions of nudes in the open air went through various phases. In the seventies, he began to represent groups of more or less isolated male bathers only loosely linked to each other; in the eighties, he concentrated frequently on a few female nudes closely assembled, often in pyramidal arrangements; from the nineties on he devoted himself to large and intricate compositions of numerous figures" (Cézanne, The Late Work, New York, 1977, p. 398).
The recent 1989 exhibition of Paul Cézanne The Bathers at the Kunstmuseum in Basle has demonstrated how Cézanne's bathing pictures can be broken down into groups which relate to a particular composition which focussed Cézanne's attention over a certain period of time. Theodore Reff further states that, "having found a few suitable poses, Cézanne used them repeatedly, only changing their positions, combining them differently, or reversing them for greater variety. But they had come, as a result, almost geometric abstractions with which he sought desperately to establish significant combinations" (T. Reff, "Painting and Theory in the final Decade", in Cézanne, The Late Work, London, 1978, p. 41). The present Les Cinq Baigneurs painting is perhaps the most ambitious and most resolved of the pictures which revolve around the theme of five male bathers in a wooded setting. As Albert Chatelet earlier had remarked, "C'est la version la plus achevée de cette série. La lumière des sous-bois y est evoquée par la vivacité et la variété des touches vertes qui forment des sortes de mandorles autours des corps nus" (Orangerie des Tuileries, Hommage à Cézanne, Paris, 1954, p. 18).
The origins of the composition can be traced back to the experiences of Cézanne's childhood and the Déjeuner sur l'Herbe theme which he painted during the 1860s. "The male nudes go back to an important part of Cézanne's boyhood to which he often returned in memory; the enchanted days spent with Zola and other friends on the bank of the river, swimming, playing, talking and reciting verses - verses in which women were the objects of romantic fantasy.
'In freeing himself from his troubled fantasy, Cézanne transposed the early erotic themes into less disturbing "classic" objects, nudes whose set postures and un-erotic surface, taken from the frozen world of the art school and museum, make them seem purely instruments of his art' (M. Shapiro, Paul Cézanne, New York, 1952, p. 116).
The narrative element of the subject is gradually reduced as Cézanne explores the interrelationship of the nude and nature. The 1875-1880 bather pictures show male and female nudes performing an almost pagan ritual of bathing. The poses of the individuals become hieratic and there is only a token interrelationship between the five figures in the picture. As Gottfried Boehm states, 'Cézanne's bathers do not exist outside the picture' and the picture has an overall, "homogeneous structure. This is the means by which the separate elements - bodies, trees, bushes, water, earth and clouds - are brought into harmony" (Cézanne, The Bathers, Basle, 1989, p. 16). Mary Louise Krumrine (ibid, p. 191) remarks of the present picture, "In this partial resolution and movement toward the greater universality achieved in the three final Grandes Baigneuses [of which two, Venturi 719 and 720, also belonged to Pellerin], Cézanne has provided an arcadian environment for his Baigneurs"
The compositional origins for the picture stretch back to the Zola-inspired figurative works of circa 1868-1870, such as La Tentation de Saint Antoine and Déjeuner sur l'Herbe (Venturi 103 and 107). Krumrine sees the self-portrait figure in the Déjeuner sur l'Herbe as the original pose for the male nude seated against the tree at the left of the present work. The standing nude, seen from the back at the centre of the composition, appears in the closely related, but earlier, Les Cinq Baigneurs of circa 1875-1877 (Venturi 268, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, also formerly a Pellerin picture). Krumrine sees several possible sources for this figure; Cleomenes' statue L'Orateur romain in the Louvre, Andrea del Sarto's Baptism in the Waters of the Jordan (an engraving of which was in the Louvre collection), or Luca Signorelli's drawing The Living carrying the Dead in the Louvre (inv. 1801), of which Cézanne owned a photograph which he kept in his studio. The right hand standing figure Krumrine identifies as a temptation figure developed from the nudes in the Tentation de Saint-Antoine picture (Venturi 103, and also see lot ). It also appears in several individual studies of the same period (Venturi 263, 395; Chappuis 436 and 1217; and Rewald 119).
The composition of five male bathers in a landscape is first found complete in another Les Cinq Baigneurs (Venturi 268). This small picture is rather sketchily treated and the landscape is considerably less detailed. The exact positioning and placing of the figures is not completely resolved. Krumrine dates the picture to 1875-77, a few years before the present work. Les Baigneurs (Venturi 389, Detroit Institute of Arts) is from a similar date, namely 1879-82, and is again of much smaller dimensions. The composition is further developed from Les Cinq Baigneurs towards the present work, although there are changed emphases and the landscape is completely different. The composition of five nude male bathers in this general arrangement can therefore be seen to have reached its culmination in the present picture (Venturi 290) which is almost completely resolved in composition and treatment.
Certain later pictures show Cézanne experimenting further, without perhaps reaching the same degree of resolution and finish. The first of these would appear to be Baigneurs en plein air of circa 1888 (Venturi 582), where a new figure entering the water in the background is introduced and the landscape is rendered differently. Another group executed circa 1890-94 show Cézanne developing the main figures of the Baigneurs composition while introducing a number of other figures as the composition evolves towards the eventual Les Grandes Baigneuses (Venturi 719). The main picture in this group (which comprises Venturi 580, 581, 585, and Rewald, Watercolours, 130) is the picture in the Musée d'Orsay (Venturi 580).
Until Cézanne's first exhibition organised by Vollard in December 1895 the Bather pictures were little known in Paris. It was also on this occasion that Auguste Pellerin bought his first Cézanne painting, also a nudes subject Leda and the Swan (see introduction). Vollard was to commission from Cézanne in 1896-97 two lithographs (Cherpin 6 and 7) which make use of the compositional elements of Cézanne's earlier Bather pictures. The Bather pictures then became crucial images for the development of twentieth century art as they were adopted and developed by the avant-garde artists. Sylvie Gache-Patin writes, "Les nombreuses compositions par Cézanne sur le thème des Baigneurs et Baigneuses eurent une influence importante sur les jeunes peintres des premières années de notre siècle: plusieurs d'entre eux en possédèrent une version (Maurice Denis, Matisse, Picasso). C'était l'ultime message du maître qui avait consacré sa vie à son oeuvre et qui ecrivait à Zola des 1881 "le travail...est, je le pense, malgré toutes les alternatives, le seul refuge ou l'on trouve le contentement réel de soi" (S. Gache-Patin, "Douze oeuvres de Cézanne de l'ancienne collection Pellerin" in La Revue du Louvre et des Musées de France, April 1984, p. 141).
Egisto Fabbri was probably the first American to buy Cézanne's works. Born in New York of an Italian father and an American mother, Fabbri had ambitions to become an artist and settled in Paris. He lived in Toulouse-Lautrec's former studio at 7 rue Tourlaque in Montmartre. He bought three Cézanne pictures from Vollard's Cézanne show in January 1896. This initial purchase was followed by many more in the next few years. So keen was his fervour for Cézanne's works, similar in a way to Pellerin's enthusiasm, that he wrote to Cézanne on 28 May 1899 telling him that he owned sixteen of his pictures "whose aristocratic and austere beauty represents for me what is noblest in modern art" (J. Rewald, Cézanne and America, Dealers, Collectors, Artists and Critics, London, 1989, p. 52). It seems that Fabbri purchased Les Cinq Baigneurs from Vollard on 24 March 1900. Among nearly thirty Cézanne pictures which he owned was another Baigneurs (Venturi 389), a similar but smaller composition.
The recent 1989 exhibition of Paul Cézanne The Bathers at the Kunstmuseum in Basle has demonstrated how Cézanne's bathing pictures can be broken down into groups which relate to a particular composition which focussed Cézanne's attention over a certain period of time. Theodore Reff further states that, "having found a few suitable poses, Cézanne used them repeatedly, only changing their positions, combining them differently, or reversing them for greater variety. But they had come, as a result, almost geometric abstractions with which he sought desperately to establish significant combinations" (T. Reff, "Painting and Theory in the final Decade", in Cézanne, The Late Work, London, 1978, p. 41). The present Les Cinq Baigneurs painting is perhaps the most ambitious and most resolved of the pictures which revolve around the theme of five male bathers in a wooded setting. As Albert Chatelet earlier had remarked, "C'est la version la plus achevée de cette série. La lumière des sous-bois y est evoquée par la vivacité et la variété des touches vertes qui forment des sortes de mandorles autours des corps nus" (Orangerie des Tuileries, Hommage à Cézanne, Paris, 1954, p. 18).
The origins of the composition can be traced back to the experiences of Cézanne's childhood and the Déjeuner sur l'Herbe theme which he painted during the 1860s. "The male nudes go back to an important part of Cézanne's boyhood to which he often returned in memory; the enchanted days spent with Zola and other friends on the bank of the river, swimming, playing, talking and reciting verses - verses in which women were the objects of romantic fantasy.
'In freeing himself from his troubled fantasy, Cézanne transposed the early erotic themes into less disturbing "classic" objects, nudes whose set postures and un-erotic surface, taken from the frozen world of the art school and museum, make them seem purely instruments of his art' (M. Shapiro, Paul Cézanne, New York, 1952, p. 116).
The narrative element of the subject is gradually reduced as Cézanne explores the interrelationship of the nude and nature. The 1875-1880 bather pictures show male and female nudes performing an almost pagan ritual of bathing. The poses of the individuals become hieratic and there is only a token interrelationship between the five figures in the picture. As Gottfried Boehm states, 'Cézanne's bathers do not exist outside the picture' and the picture has an overall, "homogeneous structure. This is the means by which the separate elements - bodies, trees, bushes, water, earth and clouds - are brought into harmony" (Cézanne, The Bathers, Basle, 1989, p. 16). Mary Louise Krumrine (ibid, p. 191) remarks of the present picture, "In this partial resolution and movement toward the greater universality achieved in the three final Grandes Baigneuses [of which two, Venturi 719 and 720, also belonged to Pellerin], Cézanne has provided an arcadian environment for his Baigneurs"
The compositional origins for the picture stretch back to the Zola-inspired figurative works of circa 1868-1870, such as La Tentation de Saint Antoine and Déjeuner sur l'Herbe (Venturi 103 and 107). Krumrine sees the self-portrait figure in the Déjeuner sur l'Herbe as the original pose for the male nude seated against the tree at the left of the present work. The standing nude, seen from the back at the centre of the composition, appears in the closely related, but earlier, Les Cinq Baigneurs of circa 1875-1877 (Venturi 268, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, also formerly a Pellerin picture). Krumrine sees several possible sources for this figure; Cleomenes' statue L'Orateur romain in the Louvre, Andrea del Sarto's Baptism in the Waters of the Jordan (an engraving of which was in the Louvre collection), or Luca Signorelli's drawing The Living carrying the Dead in the Louvre (inv. 1801), of which Cézanne owned a photograph which he kept in his studio. The right hand standing figure Krumrine identifies as a temptation figure developed from the nudes in the Tentation de Saint-Antoine picture (Venturi 103, and also see lot ). It also appears in several individual studies of the same period (Venturi 263, 395; Chappuis 436 and 1217; and Rewald 119).
The composition of five male bathers in a landscape is first found complete in another Les Cinq Baigneurs (Venturi 268). This small picture is rather sketchily treated and the landscape is considerably less detailed. The exact positioning and placing of the figures is not completely resolved. Krumrine dates the picture to 1875-77, a few years before the present work. Les Baigneurs (Venturi 389, Detroit Institute of Arts) is from a similar date, namely 1879-82, and is again of much smaller dimensions. The composition is further developed from Les Cinq Baigneurs towards the present work, although there are changed emphases and the landscape is completely different. The composition of five nude male bathers in this general arrangement can therefore be seen to have reached its culmination in the present picture (Venturi 290) which is almost completely resolved in composition and treatment.
Certain later pictures show Cézanne experimenting further, without perhaps reaching the same degree of resolution and finish. The first of these would appear to be Baigneurs en plein air of circa 1888 (Venturi 582), where a new figure entering the water in the background is introduced and the landscape is rendered differently. Another group executed circa 1890-94 show Cézanne developing the main figures of the Baigneurs composition while introducing a number of other figures as the composition evolves towards the eventual Les Grandes Baigneuses (Venturi 719). The main picture in this group (which comprises Venturi 580, 581, 585, and Rewald, Watercolours, 130) is the picture in the Musée d'Orsay (Venturi 580).
Until Cézanne's first exhibition organised by Vollard in December 1895 the Bather pictures were little known in Paris. It was also on this occasion that Auguste Pellerin bought his first Cézanne painting, also a nudes subject Leda and the Swan (see introduction). Vollard was to commission from Cézanne in 1896-97 two lithographs (Cherpin 6 and 7) which make use of the compositional elements of Cézanne's earlier Bather pictures. The Bather pictures then became crucial images for the development of twentieth century art as they were adopted and developed by the avant-garde artists. Sylvie Gache-Patin writes, "Les nombreuses compositions par Cézanne sur le thème des Baigneurs et Baigneuses eurent une influence importante sur les jeunes peintres des premières années de notre siècle: plusieurs d'entre eux en possédèrent une version (Maurice Denis, Matisse, Picasso). C'était l'ultime message du maître qui avait consacré sa vie à son oeuvre et qui ecrivait à Zola des 1881 "le travail...est, je le pense, malgré toutes les alternatives, le seul refuge ou l'on trouve le contentement réel de soi" (S. Gache-Patin, "Douze oeuvres de Cézanne de l'ancienne collection Pellerin" in La Revue du Louvre et des Musées de France, April 1984, p. 141).
Egisto Fabbri was probably the first American to buy Cézanne's works. Born in New York of an Italian father and an American mother, Fabbri had ambitions to become an artist and settled in Paris. He lived in Toulouse-Lautrec's former studio at 7 rue Tourlaque in Montmartre. He bought three Cézanne pictures from Vollard's Cézanne show in January 1896. This initial purchase was followed by many more in the next few years. So keen was his fervour for Cézanne's works, similar in a way to Pellerin's enthusiasm, that he wrote to Cézanne on 28 May 1899 telling him that he owned sixteen of his pictures "whose aristocratic and austere beauty represents for me what is noblest in modern art" (J. Rewald, Cézanne and America, Dealers, Collectors, Artists and Critics, London, 1989, p. 52). It seems that Fabbri purchased Les Cinq Baigneurs from Vollard on 24 March 1900. Among nearly thirty Cézanne pictures which he owned was another Baigneurs (Venturi 389), a similar but smaller composition.