Les Baigneurs - The Bathers. Petite Planche - Smaller Version. by Paul Cézanne, 1839-1906

Paul Cézanne, 1839-1906
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Les Baigneurs - The Bathers. Petite Planche - Smaller Version.

Original lithograph in colours. 1896/97. Signed 'P. Cezanne' below the image lower right with the lithograph signature. From the first edition of 100 impressions. Drawn and printed at the studio of Auguste Clot, Paris 1896. Issued by Ambroise Vollard for the 'Album d'Estampes de la Galerie Vollard', Paris 1897. Rare in this first issue, especially with the signature stone.
Ref: Cherpin - Cezanne 1'Oeuvre Grave no 6. Melot - Prints by the Impressionists Cezanne no 8. Venturi - Cezanne L'Oeuvre no 1156. Druick - Bulletin National Gallery of Chicago 1972 'Cezanne and Lithography' no 3.

Superb sparkling fresh impression with excellent colours. On off-white chine applique paper with a white wove backing sheet, as issued. Image to full china paper size. Overall sheet size: 16 1/4 x 22ins. Image: 83/4x10 3/4ins (222x272mm)

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The theme of 'The Bathers' is one of the most important in Cezanne's work. It provided the subject for some of his most powerful and significant later works, the three versions of 'The Bathers' painted in 1893-94. At the end of his life Cezanne was constantly striving to transform the Impressionist emphasis on 'a sensation of light' into what he saw as art worthy to stand with the great classical masterpieces. By this he meant he wanted to give it monumentality, to make it the equal of Poussin, his great hero. In the 'bather' themes the massing of the figures and the integration with the landscape is handled in a manner which he hoped would challenge the old masters, whilst at the same time retaining the freshness of direct experience which he himself remembered from the occasions when he bathed in the streams of the Provence landscape.

Cezanne's smaller lithograph on the theme of 'The Bathers' is in many ways his finest print in a colour medium. It was the third composition that he made in lithography, and unlike the two previous works, including the 'Large Bathers', he hand-drew the black 'key' composition direct onto stone rather than onto transfer paper. A maquette was then made by him hand watercolouring a black impression, and he assisted Clot in creating the colour stones and the final work from this maquette.

The first edition of the lithograph was printed from these stones in 1897, and the edition offered for sale by Vollard. Some but not all of the impressions of this first issue have the lithograph signature, as above. The colours are in typical soft tones with blue predominating. Some time after 1897 Cezanne made a further watercoloured maquette using a black and white proof. From this a second edition with differing colours - predominately green - was printed onto loose china paper and with no lithograph signature. These prints are frequently described as proofs for the first issue but are in fact a later reprint.

Fine quality unfaded impression of the first issue, with the signature, as here, have become very scarce indeed.