Bather With Outstretched Arms (recto); Study of a Tree (verso)

Prints and Drawings

1874/77

Paul Cézanne
French, 1839–1906

In the 1870s Paul Cezanne took up the subject of bathers, an interest that persisted until the end of his career. The artist did not use live models; his impetus was more conceptual than naturalistic, and he treated the human figure above all as an exercise in formal composition. This drawing derives from a group of studies and paintings that feature a single male bather with one arm rigidly outstretched. While the figure’s unconventional pose defies ready explanation, it was inspired by an ancient Roman sculpture of a dancing satyr in the Louvre Museum, Paris.

Cezanne’s staccato lines, although they appear quick and spontaneous, were in fact applied carefully and methodically as he slowly explored his subject, endowing his bather with a monumentality that belies the drawing’s modest dimensions.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Prints and Drawings

Artist: Paul Cézanne
Title: Bather With Outstretched Arms (recto); Study of a Tree (verso)
Origin: France
Date: Made 1874–1877
Medium: Graphite on cream laid paper (pieced)
Dimensions: 179 × 111 mm
Credit Line: Gift of Richard and Mary L. Gray
Reference Number: 2019.840
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Else Cassirer, Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert (B. Cassirer, 1923), p. 602 (ill.).
Georges Rivière, Le Maître Paul Cézanne (H. Floury, 1923), p. 118 (ill.).
Lionello Venturi, Cézanne: Son art, son oeuvre (P. Rosenberg, 1936), vol. 1, no. 1260; vol. 2, pl. 347.
Theodore Reff, “Cézanne’s Bather with Outstretched Arms,” Gazette des beaux-arts 59 (Mar. 1962), pp. 173–90, esp. p. 188 n. 13a.
Adrien Chappuis, The Drawings of Paul Cézanne: A Catalogue Raisonné (New York Graphic Society, 1973), vol. 1, no. 385; vol. 2, pl. 385.
Guila Ballas, Cézanne: Baigneuses et baigneurs: Thème et composition (Dyonon/Adam Biro, 2002), p. 318 n. 43.

Paris, Galerie Renou and Colle, Aquarelles et baignades de Cézanne, 1935.
Basel, Kunsthalle, Paul Cézanne, 1936, cat. 128.
Art Institute of Chicago, Gray Collection: Seven Centuries of Art, Sept. 25, 2010–Jan. 2, 2011, cat. 71 (ill.).
The Art Institute of Chicago, “Pure Drawing: Seven Centuries of Art from the Gray Collection”, January 25 - May 10, 2020, pp. 72-73, fig. 7, p. 141, GC 93.

Paul Cézanne (son of the artist), Paris, to at least 1936 [Basel 1936]. Jacques Dubourg (1897–1981), Paris; by descent. Sold, Christie’s, London, Feb. 5, 2004, lot 312, to Richard and Mary L. Gray, Chicago; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2019.

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