The Bathers

Artist/Culture John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925)

Date1917

Mediumwatercolor and opaque watercolor, over graphite, on thick, textured, cream wove paper

Dimensionssheet: 40.1 × 53 cm (15 13/16 × 20 7/8 in.)

ClassificationsWatercolors

Credit LineSustaining Membership Fund

Terms

paper

Object number1917.91

Label TextIn 1917, Miami-based business magnate John D. Rockefeller made Sargent an offer he couldn’t refuse—$15,000 for two portraits. The artist’s prolonged three-month stay in Florida included a visit to his friends Marion and Charles Deering’s estate, Vizcaya. Set in a nearby lagoon, The Bathers is unique among Sargent’s Florida watercolors given its prominent inclusion of nudes. Multiple scholars theorize that the three figures may have been Black laborers who worked on the estate. They pose like academic models, each demonstrating the male body and its musculature from a new perspective. The bather motif has a long tradition in the history of pan-Atlantic art, one that was revived by the post-impressionists. This work is perhaps a nostalgic return to Sargent’s early French impressionist training.ProvenanceThe artist;

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