Bathers (Baigneurs)

ca. 1898

Like Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne was commissioned to create color prints by the enterprising publisher and dealer Ambroise Vollard, who believed that such work would appeal to collectors in an expanding art market. This print was based on the artist’s best-known painting at the time, Bathers at Rest, 1877. Not comfortable working directly on the stone, Cézanne drew his image in lithographic crayon on special paper, and that drawing was transferred to the stone and printed as this black-and-white proof. To create the subsequent color versions, Cézanne painted over the lithograph proof in watercolor, and the master printer Auguste Clot used that as his guide to prepare the color stones.

The figure on the right is based on a Roman sculpture of Hermes fastening his sandal that Cézanne saw at the Louvre.