The Bathers - Paul Gauguin 1897

Four young women with olive-green-colored skin shaded with cool blue stand or sit in a vividly colored landscape surrounded by trees in this horizontal painting. A slender, spruce-blue tree divides the picture just to our left of center. The ground around the tree spans the width of the composition and is carpeted in coral orange, carnation pink, and lavender purple with a handful of emerald-green saplings and tufts of grass. A pair of young women are to each side of the central tree, and a body of water extends across the composition just beyond this bit of land. To our left, the two women’s bodies face away, and they look back over their left shoulders at us. The girl on the left has black hair and wears a honey-orange and pale blue fabric wrapped around her waist. The girl next to her has copper-red hair with a pink cloth wrapped around her chest. They stand by or in the water so are shown from the knees up. The water there is made up of swirling pools of flame red and golden yellow bordered by lilac purple and peacock blue. On the other side of the tree, a young woman with white flowers in her brown hair sits on the ground, also with her back to us. The fourth faces us along the right edge of the canvas. She has black hair and stands next to and touches a thicker tree trunk with one hand. The water beyond them is painted with patches of rose pink, lemon yellow, and ice blue. Areas mottled with teal, honeydew, and bottle green suggest shrubs and trees lining the far side of the water. Closer inspection reveals two ghostly, pale blue dogs lying on the ground near the lower right corner. The artist signed and dated in lower right, “P Gauguin 97.”