The Bathers (Cézanne)
painting by Paul Cézanne in Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Bathers (French: Les Grandes Baigneuses) is an oil painting by French artist Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) first exhibited in 1906. The painting, which is exhibited in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is the largest of a series of Bather paintings by Cézanne; the others are in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, National Gallery, London, the Barnes Foundation, Pennsylvania, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Occasionally referred to as the Big Bathers or Large Bathers to distinguish it from the smaller works, the painting is considered one of the masterpieces of modern art, and is often considered Cézanne's finest work. The painting was featured in the 1980 BBC Two series 100 Great Paintings.
Cézanne worked on the painting for seven years, and it remained unfinished at the time of his death in 1906.
The painting was purchased in 1937 for US$110,000 (equivalent to $2,463,542 in 2025) with funds from a trust fund for the Philadelphia Museum of Art by their major benefactor, Joseph E. Widener. It was previously owned by Leo Stein.
With each version of the Bathers, Cézanne moved away from the traditional presentation of paintings, intentionally creating works that would not appeal to the novice viewer. He did this to avoid fleeting fads and give a timeless quality to his work, and in so doing paved the way for future artists to disregard current trends and paint pieces that would appeal equally to all generations. The abstract nude females present in Large Bathers give the painting tension and density.
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Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2270938. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1839, 1906, 1980 and 1937.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Bathers (Cézanne)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.