The Bathers
1897
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 60.4 x 93.4 cm (23 3/4 x 36 3/4 in.) framed: 82 x 114.3 x 7.9 cm (32 5/16 x 45 x 3 1/8 in.)
Classification
Painting
Department
CF
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Sam A. Lewisohn
Accession Number
1951.5.1
Art Historical Context
Paul Gauguin painted *The Bathers* in 1897 during his second stay in Tahiti, where he had settled to escape what he saw as the constraints of European society. Working in the final years of his life, the artist drew inspiration from the landscapes and people of Polynesia, portraying figures in a lush, imagined tropical setting. This oil on canvas reflects his deep fascination with non-Western cultures, which he approached through a romanticized lens shaped by both personal experience and colonial-era perspectives. Gauguin’s style here blends Post-Impressionist techniques with emerging Symboli...
About the Artist
Paul Gauguin · 1848–1903
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) was a French Post-Impressionist painter whose bold experiments with color, form, and subject matter made him one of the most influential figures in the transition from 19th-century art to modernism. His rejection of European civilization for the perceived authenticity of 'primitive' cultures established an archetype of artistic exile that continues to resonate. Gauguin's ...