Five Bathers (Cinq baigneuses)

Five Bathers (Cinq baigneuses) of 1877 at the Barnes Foundation is one of the earliest works Cézanne completed in the male five-figure bather format, working out compositional arrangements that he would revise and elaborate through the following decade. The Barnes Foundation holds the most substantial collection of Cézanne bather paintings outside France, and this 1877 canvas is among the collection's earliest examples, documenting the bather project at its most exploratory moment before the constructive method of his mature style fully asserted itself.

The five figures are arranged in a roughly symmetrical grouping around the central vertical axis of the composition, a formal organization that Cézanne would increasingly disrupt in later bather canvases through the more dynamic, interlocking figure arrangements of his mature style. The paint handling is relatively loose and Impressionist compared to his later systematic constructive approach.