Bather and Rocks

Although it looks like a complete work, Bather and Rocks is a section of a much larger mural. At the time he painted it, Paul Cézanne was living in an 18th-century mansion in southern France. The artist covered a wall of its grand salon with a landscape that included this figure in the foreground. In 1907, the year after Cézanne’s death, this portion of the painting was detached from the wall, transferred to canvas, and sold.

Even as a fragment, Bather and Rocks is a work of remarkable power and vigor. Painted with an almost violent energy, the heavily muscled nude faces a massive rock, which he seems to be holding up against the force of the rushing water.

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