Bathers

Bathers at the Artizon Museum in Tokyo carries a year date of 1800 that is anomalous for Pater, who died in 1736 — if accurate, the date may reflect a later reworking, a mistaken attribution, or an inscribed copy date. Taking the attribution to Pater as sound, this canvas belongs to his bathing woman series and would have been produced in the late 1720s or early 1730s. The Artizon Museum's holding places the work within Japan's growing engagement with European old master collections, particularly the holdings assembled by the Ishibashi Foundation after the Second World War. Bathing scenes were among the most internationally marketable of Rococo subjects, circulating widely through European and eventually global collections from the eighteenth century onward.

If this is an authentic Pater from his working years, the technique would reflect his characteristic handling of skin tones against water and foliage. The soft luminosity of the female figure in ambient outdoor light is the central technical achievement of such compositions, and Pater built it through a sequence of warm underpainting, modelling glazes, and final impasto highlights on the uppermost surfaces.