Paul Cézanne - Three Bathers [1879-82]

Paul Cézanne - Three Bathers [1879-82], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Cézanne devoted over two-hundred paintings, watercolours and drawings to the theme of bathing men and women. He started working with this subject in the late sixties and carried on developing it until 1906, sometimes taking several years to finish the largest paintings. As the compositions evolve, the descriptive elements disappear in favour of construction. The stocky figures become the members of a rigorously ordered pictorial assembly and not the representatives of corporeal beauty.

[Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 55 x 52 cm]

Paul Cézanne - The Stove in the Studio [c.1865]

Paul Cézanne - The Stove in the Studio [c.1865], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This view of the artist's studio was probably painted in Paris. During this period Cézanne divided his time between his native Aix-en-Provence and Paris, and the picture evokes the privation of his Bohemian existence in the capital. On the right a single flower stands in a vase on a table. A canvas stretcher is visible behind the stove, and a palette and what may be a small picture hang on the wall at the left. The first owner of this work was Cézanne's boyhood friend, the writer Emile Zola.

[Oil on canvas, 41 x 30 cm]