The boat and the bathers

Cézanne painted this long strip of canvas around 1890 to sit above a door. The collector Victor Chocquet had asked for two such panels for his Paris apartment, this one and a companion with a peacock fountain, now privately owned. Apart from the murals of his youth in the family house near Aix, it is the only decorative commission Cézanne ever carried out. When Chocquet died in 1891, both panels were still unfinished, and this one was auctioned with his pictures in 1899. Later it was cut into three pieces. Two of them reached the French state from Domenica, widow of the dealer Paul Guillaume, as part of the Walter-Guillaume collection. The missing centre, with the big boat under sail, was bought in 1973 and the three were joined again. A smaller boat lies moored near the bathers on the left bank.