Bathers (Summer Scene)

In the summer of 1869 at M�ric, Bazille had painted one of his most striking works, one that gained acceptance by the 1870 Salon. The Bathers shows a number of youths in a grove of birches, fooling about and bathing in a pool. There is an occasional clumsiness in the rendering of the bodies, the foreshortening of perspective, and the painting of the water. The lighting of the figures is uneven, and they do not seem to be lit by the same sources as the setting. But what is arresting in this picture by a man still in his twenties is its view of life and of man, and its determination to rediscover the figurative values of the old masters in modern everyday life. The man leaning against the tree at left resembles a St Sebastian, the reclining youth an ancient river deity, and the helpfulness of the man at right may recall Christ helping the damned up out of purgatory.