Analysis Of Paul Cezanne's 'The Large Bathers'

April showers bring May flowers or, in Caillebotte’s case, the Impressionist piece A Paris Street, Rainy Day (1877). Downcast faces stare into the puddles while umbrellas shield figures from not the rain, but each other. Caillebotte’s painting captures French author Baudelaire’s concept of the ephemeral modernity with his subjects, their minute interactions, and a complex composition style that moves the viewer’s eyes and heart.

Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles D’Avignon is considered by many to be a revolutionary breakthrough in the history of modern art. Demoiselles is a “great manifesto of modernist painting” as Picasso had abandoned all known form of traditional art, a radical break from the Western tradition that very much led to the Cubism movement (Bishop, 2002). What made Demoiselles revolutionary was that "in it Picasso broke away from the two central characteristics of European painting since the Renaissance: the classical norm for the human figure, and the spatial illusionism of one-point perspective" (Fry, 1966). Cubism had “destroyed […] the realist conventions for three-dimensional perspective which had been dominant in art since the Renaissance” (Butler, 2010). While generally credited as the first Cubist painting, art historians such as John Golding have argued that it was only a “starting point for the history of Cubism” (1958). Indeed, the picture predicates key characteristics of Cubism like the distortion and break down of objects and figures into distinct shapes, rather than being itself a Cubist painting. This analysis will concentrate on the elements of Cubism in Demoiselles and how it led to the movement.

This formal art analysis will compare and contrast the line, color, light, and composition of "Gertrude Stein by Pablo Picasso and “The Toilet Of Venus" by Francois Boucher. The formal qualities of these paintings provide a classically orientated approach to the individual subject, which provide similar methods of composition and line. However, Picasso tends to chose earthy color tones in contrast to the brightly colored image provided by Boucher of Madame de Pompadour. More so, Boucher provides a much more lighted environment for his subject, which is dissimilar to the muted light of Gertrude stein in an interior setting. In essence, a comparison and contrast to the line, color, composition, and lighting will be formally analyzed in

Matisse's Bonheur de Vivre take elements from Paul Cezanne's The Large Bathers and create his own work that move beyond what Cezanne's work depicts.

the time to finish the painting "The Large Bathers", which was exhibited in a posthumous

"Large Bathers", is widely considered to be one of his Paul Cezanne's finest, if not his finest, work. Looking at the brilliant color, the depiction of the structure of the figures, the attention to composition and the creation of implied spatial depth, it is not hard to see how Cezanne came to influence a number of prominent artists in his own day, as well as of the next generation. There is a certain monumental permanence and timelessness that one doesn't really find with the impressionist's more casual

Matisse’s Bonheur de Vivre (Joy of Life) was finished in 1906 by Henri Matisse and this was considered to be his greatest Fauve painting. It was a very large scale painting depicting an arcadian landscape adoned with wonderful colored forest, sea, meadow, sky and with plenty of nude male and female figures both in motion and stationary. It was full of emotional expressions and not reality of nature. The monumental canvas was first exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants of 1906, where its cadmium colors and spatial distortions caused a public expression of protest and outrage.

While Matisse and Picasso also share Cézanne’s idea of large and distorted representations of female forms, as opposed to proportional and gracious ones, letting a mark of abstraction to be seen on those works, they also differentiate themselves on other ways the abstraction

Matisse’s Bonheur de Vivre (Joy of Life) and Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon are two paintings from the early 20th century when post Impressionism emerges. (Harris: Cezanne) These paintings are part of an abstract art style and they were inspired by paintings that laid the foundation for abstraction. One painting they reflect is Cezanne’s The Large Bathers.

The Large Bathers by Paul Cezanne had inspired many artists, including Pablo Picasso in his painting, Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon, and Henri Matisse in his Bonheur de Vivre. Those three paintings belong to three different artistic styles, but they have many things in common, as they show the beauty of females. In this essay, I will discuss how both Bonheur de Vivre and Les Demoiselles d’Avignon can be simultaneously seen as inspired by and breaking free of The Large Bathers by Cezanne.

When exploring the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, one can find themselves enjoying many unique and creative paintings. Sometimes these paintings can draw similarities and differences among each other that make them stand out even more. Two paintings that draw significant similarities while also contrasting one another are Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Dance at the Bougival (accession no. 37.375) and Oskar Kokoschka’s Two Nudes (Lovers) (accession no. 1973.196). Renoir’s piece was made in 1883 with oil on canvas as his medium of choice while Kokoschka’s piece was made in 1913 with oil on canvas as his medium of choice as well.

Plate 1.3.22 is able to illustrate work dated between the years of 1904-06, this is a modern canvas compared to that of plate 1.2.20 which was completed in 1887. The brushwork on plate 1.3.22 is able to gratify two alternative demands, this being both Cezanne’s sense of the relative standards in light and colour, alongside the concentrated impression of the physical landscape he was looking at.

The Large Bathers, is an oil on canvas by Paul Cezanne and it was first exhibited in 1906. Also finished in 1906 was Bonheur de Vivre (Joy of Life) an oil on canvas by Henri Matisse. These were followed by Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, an oil on canvas by Pablo Picasso in 1907. The paintings by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse are similar to Paul Cezanne's work, but are also different in many ways.

Among the numerous paintings, sculptures and different art work presented, the impressionist paintings such as, The Seine at Vétheuil Circa and L'Estaque both intrigued and captured my attention. I have a personal admiration for simplicity and tranquility in which it’s presented in both of these paintings. I want to present,

In fact, between paints of Joy of Life and The Large Bathers, for example we find similarities as both of them used a landscape in their paints, then “in both works trees are planted at the sides and in the far distance, and their upper boughs are spread apart like curtains, highlighting the figures lounging beneath. In addition, like Cézanne, Matisse unifies the figures and the landscape. Cézanne does this by stiffening and tilting his trunk-like figures. In Matisse's work, the serpentine arabesques that define the contours of the women are heavily emphasized, and then reiterated in the curvilinear lines of the trees”.(1)( HenriMatisse.org,nd)