Cézanne’s bather paintings, including Three Bathers, draw our attention to the female figures central to each works’ composition. Matisse also focuses our attention on the female figures as he, like Cézanne, portrays the nymphs in natural, often vast or barren settings, leaving us with little or nothing to focus on but the female form. In Three Bathers, Cézanne depicts three women bathing in a stream surrounded by woods. The viewer is places in a strictly observational role as none of the three women provide any opportunity for interaction in the scene. Furthermore we see the dark colors and grotesque female bodies so typical of Cézanne’s bathers. The women are enclosed by nature as depicted by the arc of the tree branches above them. This not only protects them from the world but frames them such that the world is protected from them. This depiction of bathers is peculiar and makes us wonder, why did Cézanne choose to depict women like that? His portrayal of female nymphs stems from his own personal and emotional complexes dealing with women and sexuality. Cézanne’s bather paintings depict both men and women together in violent scenes and women by themselves. The latter group includes Three Bathers. Men are outside of the image and there is no possibility for interaction with the women in the painting. Making men merely observers to these scenes, Cézanne thereby places himself outside the realm of their power over him (Krumrine et al. 83). This internal power struggle is further depicted by the rigid composition and structure that he creates in many of the bather paintings, especially Three Bathers. It allows Cézanne full control over the women in the paintings, something he felt incapable of in real life (Krumrine et al 137). Furthermore, the act of bathing not only represents the Christian of baptism but the need for cleansing. Cézanne shows women in an effort to cleanse themselves as an effort to purify them of their malicious actions and evil natures (Krumrine et al 105).