ABSTRACT
The special, even unique, role of the sequence of drawings and paintings of bathers in Paul Cézanne’s oeuvre has been pointed out many times. Cézanne’s dedication, particularly after his period of quasi-apprenticeship to Pissarro, to the practice of painting directly from what he called the “motif“ is legendary. In his letters to and conversations with younger painters he returned relentlessly to this theme. In an early letter to Zola he is explicit: “You know all pictures painted inside, in the studio, will never be as good as those done outside” (Rewald, 1976, p. 112). Indeed, it was his determined pursuit of this self-imposed imperative that led him to his death. As Lindsay (1969) tells it, on October 15, “He started off on foot for the motif (with) his water color knapsack on his shoulder. While he was working a heavy rain storm blew up. For a while he stayed at his easel hoping the weather would clear. Drenched and chilled he at last went off, but the strain of plodding through the storm, hampered as he was, was too much. He collapsed by the road-side and was found later by the driver of a laundry cart who . . . brought him back, half-conscious, to the rue Boulegon” (p. 341). He never recovered; he died a week later.
