The Bather

In 1895 Pissarro was 65, living at Éragny in Normandy, and a chronic infection in one eye kept him from working outdoors for weeks at a time, so figures like this one were put together indoors from drawings. He signed and dated it at the lower left, C. Pissarro 95. His dealer Durand-Ruel sold it that same year to Hayashi Tadamasa, a Japanese dealer in Paris who had spent nearly 20 years selling prints and screens to French painters and would go on to run Japan's section at the world's fair of 1900. The picture went east rather than to a French collector. It came back into the trade at the Hayashi sale in 1913, and reached Washington in 1963 with the Chester Dale bequest.