Four Bathers (Quatre baigneuses)

Four Bathers (Quatre baigneuses) of 1876 at the Barnes Foundation shows Cézanne working with a slightly different number of figures than his more common three- or five-figure compositions, the four figures creating a different set of formal problems and solutions. The Barnes collection's extraordinary holdings of bather canvases from the mid-1870s period allows direct comparison of how Cézanne varied the number, arrangement, and handling of his bather figures across closely spaced years of intensive experiment.

The four figures are arranged in a horizontal band across the foreground of a shallow landscape setting, their grouping more evenly distributed across the canvas width than the pyramidal arrangements of some companion works. The paint handling at this date shows the intersection of Impressionist spontaneity with Cézanne's developing interest in structural density.