Three Bathers

Three Bathers of 1879, now at the Petit Palais in Paris, is one of the works that Matisse purchased in 1899 and kept for decades as a touchstone for his own artistic development. Writing about the canvas to the museum director when he eventually donated it, Matisse called it his 'prop and support throughout my career as an artist.' The painting's influence operated through its resolution of the problem of depicting the human figure within a landscape through purely formal means—the bodies given weight through constructed planes rather than idealized anatomy.

The three figures are arranged in a compact triangular grouping within a shallow landscape setting, their forms echoing the rounded masses of the trees and the curved surface of the water behind them. The constructive brushstroke is fully developed here, each stroke simultaneously modeling form and establishing its spatial orientation.