Bathers by a River
Bathers by a River (), also known as Bathers at the River and occasionally referred to as simply Bathers, is a large 1917 oil-on-canvas painting by French artist Henri Matisse. Matisse began painting the canvas in 1909 and finished the painting in the fall of 1917, making it one of three pictures he painted (along with "Piano Lesson" and "The Moroccans") during the Battle of Verdun. Background. "Bathers by a River" was originally commissioned by Russian art collector Sergei Shchukin, but Shchukin rejected it after seeing an early watercolor study of the picture. The initial  concept for the painting was "a scene of Arcandian leisure" and work began on the canvas in 1909. Matisse worked on it during portions of 1910, 1913, and 1916 before finishing it in 1917. Stephanie D’Alessandro, curator of modern art at the Art Institute of Chicago, as said that there exists, "good anecdotal history that this picture was related to the two others, "Dance II" and "Music", that were part of the original Shchukin commission." The canvas has been extensively studied—the varnish removed and it has been x-rayed and scanned with infrared technology. A 21st century effort by  curators and scientists to colorize a black-and-white photograph of "Bathers by a River" taken in November 1913 revealed that a portion of the colors on the finished canvas as it exists today was present in 1913. It was during the period of 1913, when Matisse was working on the picture in Morocco, that "Bathers by a River" departed drastically from the original idea by, "divid[ing] the canvas vertically into equal, hard-edges of green, black, white, and pale gray, suppress[ing] the waterfall, condens[ing] the foliage and transform[ing] his four bathers, cutting off the head of one, slicing another ’s legs at the ankles into massive, mutilated, stone-grey figures." "Nature" described the evolution of the canvas as, "[beginning] as a pastoral scene depicting five nude women beside a waterfall. Matisse later removed one of the figures and transformed the others into sombre, abstract forms, isolating each one against columns of green, black, white and grey-blue, and turning a blue stream into a black band. To show how Matisse altered the painting over time, conservators at the institute combined various digital images of the work produced from infrared reflectograms, scanned X-radiographs and early photographs." Description. The "Los  Angeles Times" remarked on "Bathers by a River" as the centerpiece of the "Radical Invention" exhibit in 2010: The picture has been compared to Paul Cézanne's "Large Bathers", which was completed in 1905 and exhibited together with "Bathers by a River" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2012. Interpretation. The Art Institute of Chicago, where "Bathers by a River" is on display in the permanent collection, indicates that World War I may have influenced the painting's final form: "NPR" said of the picture: In another description of 2010's "Radical Invention" exhibit, "NPR" said, "The climax of  the show includes two of his most extraordinary paintings, both combining an extreme of abstraction with readable figurative images. Both are huge, but one of them is monumental and hieratic, and the other is achingly poignant. One is the 8-foot by 12-foot Bathers by a River, from the Art Institute of Chicago, where this show originated. Matisse reworked this painting over the entire period covered by the exhibition, changing it from a lightweight pastel-colored beach scene to an exotic Eden, a gigantic icon with four female demigoddesses outlined against a row of broad flat vertical panels, with  a sinister—or is it benign?—white snake rearing up its head from the bottom of the canvas. We feel something intensely symbolic, but Matisse doesn't feel the need to explain the iconography." History. The Art Institute of Chicago acquired the painting in 1953, the year before Matisse's death. Reception and influence. "Bathers by a River" is considered to be one of the high points of Matisse's career. It has served as the inspiration for several subsequent paintings by various artists including "River Bathers" (1953) by Grace Hartigan and "The Bather" (1983) by Sean Scully. Abstract sculptor Anthony  Caro has also cited "Bathers by a River" as inspiration for his work. The "Chicago Tribune" wrote that the picture is an, "aesthetically muted, visually rigid work of early 20th century experimentation." The "New York Times" said of "Bathers by a River", "With its immense dolmen-tree-trunk figures in shades of gray, blue and pink, it remains one of the most difficult, least ingratiating of modernist masterpieces." In popular culture. The painting was featured in the 1980 BBC television series "100 Great Paintings", and "Bathers by a River" plays a prominent role in the 1986 film, "Ferris Bueller's  Day Off", written and directed by John Hughes and starring Matthew Broderick. Exhibition history. "Bathers by a River" has been included in various exhibitions since 1926 including: