1905, Paul Cezanne, Bathers -- National Gallery (London)
From the museum label:
During the last decade of his life, Cezanne worked intermittently on three large paintings of nude female bathers. They form a grand final statement of a theme that had obsessed hire for more than 40 years.
Evidence suggests that Cezanne started working on the London painting first. The intensely worked painting in the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, then became the focus of the artist's most sustained struggle to resolve a complicated composition. Cezanne may not have returned to the present, more resolved painting until as late as 1905. The final painting, in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Is far larger than the first two and executed with seemingly effortless assurance.
Our painting was acquired in 1964, Although It was the sixth Cezanne to enter the national collection, largely paid for by private donations, the purchase was greeted with outrage in some quarters. Even at the height of Swinging London it was considered too jagged, unnatural and eccentric -- glaring evidence of the excesses of modern art. Indeed, it remains to this day a provocation, the keystone of 20th-century art in the National Gallery.
1905, Paul Cezanne, Bathers -- National Gallery (London)
From the museum label:
During the last decade of his life, Cezanne worked intermittently on three large paintings of nude female bathers. They form a grand final statement of a theme that had obsessed hire for more than 40 years.
Evidence suggests that Cezanne started working on the London painting first. The intensely worked painting in the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, then became the focus of the artist's most sustained struggle to resolve a complicated composition. Cezanne may not have returned to the present, more resolved painting until as late as 1905. The final painting, in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Is far larger than the first two and executed with seemingly effortless assurance.
Our painting was acquired in 1964, Although It was the sixth Cezanne to enter the national collection, largely paid for by private donations, the purchase was greeted with outrage in some quarters. Even at the height of Swinging London it was considered too jagged, unnatural and eccentric -- glaring evidence of the excesses of modern art. Indeed, it remains to this day a provocation, the keystone of 20th-century art in the National Gallery.