Les Baigneurs de Cézanne

Male Bathers (1875-1906)
Paul Cézanne (1839-1906,) Aix-en-Provence

Over the last thirty years of his life Cézanne produced a large number of paintings of Bathers.  Occasionally they are presented in mixed groups, but most are segregated by sex. Given the longstanding dominance within our official culture of the male gaze, it should come as no great surprise to find that his groups of Female Bathers are much better known than their male counterparts, but as far as I’ve been able to ascertain the two groups are roughly equal in number.  So, here I’m presenting just the males, most of them naked, beginning with the bather with outstretched arms from 1875 and ending with an unfinished group from 1906.  I believe it’s unfinished because the artist died before he could finish it.