Baigneurs (Bathers)

Baigneurs (Bathers) of 1892, now at Lyon's Museum of Fine Arts, depicts male bathers in a landscape in the group format that Cézanne developed through careful study of the Old Masters—particularly Michelangelo and Rubens—combined with his innovative approach to constructive painting. The male bather series runs parallel to the female bather compositions and extends throughout Cézanne's mature career, each canvas working out a different configuration of figures in relation to landscape. The Lyon canvas shows his characteristic refusal to make the figures either conventionally beautiful or conventionally expressive.

The male figures are treated as volumes rather than idealized nudes, their anatomical structure described through Cézanne's constructive stroke system rather than through the smooth academic modeling that conventionally dignified the male figure. The landscape behind them is given equal structural treatment, figures and trees both subjected to the same analytical process.