Detail of Bather in the Woods by Pissarro in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, May 2011

Title: Bather in the Woods

Artist: Camille Pissarro (French, Charlotte Amalie, Saint Thomas 1830–1903 Paris)

Date: 1895

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 23 3/4 x 28 3/4 in. (60.3 x 73 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929

Accession Number: 29.100.126

In summer 1893 Pissarro wrote his son Lucien that he was planning a series of canvases of nude peasant women bathing, even though he foresaw difficulties in engaging models in rural Eragny. None were completed until 1894, and Pissarro continued to paint variations on the theme through 1896. This picture falls midway in the project. Pissarro’s approach reflects the continuing influence of divisionist technique, but more naturalistic tendencies emerge in his attempts to capture the delicate fall of light over the grassy bank and the woman's back. Her pose recurs in two studies of a clothed model painted the same year.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437306