Matisse created many other works depicting bathers and nymphs in addition to the ones mentioned earlier in this discussion of his revision of Cézanne’s message. Of these, two stand out as masterpieces of Matisse’s career. These are Bathers with a Turtle (1908) and Bathers by a Stream (1916).
Matisse, Henri. Bathers with a Turtle. 1908. The Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis.
Bathers with a Turtle (1908) is also part of Matisse’s revision of Cézanne’s Three Bathers because it completely separates itself from it in terms of composition and fully portrays the image of women that Matisse wants us to see. There is no scenery to enclose the women like Cézanne includes in his paintings. The women here are interacting with nature, as we see in Joy of Life, beyond the simple and passive interaction with the water that we see in Three Bathers. They are nurturing a small turtle, whose placement in a completely unnatural setting makes it extremely vulnerable. The women here are shown as caring for the turtle. They are passive, calm, and compassionate, something never seen in Cézanne’s women. In Bathers with a Turtle Matisse has shown women as figures that are to be celebrated and both the givers and caretakers of life.
Matisse, Henri. Bathers by a Stream. 1916. The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago.
Bathers by a Stream appears later than most of Matisse’s nymph-like figures and the style is very much representative of that time period in Matisse’s artwork. The painting also demonstrates an influence from his trip to Morocco and depicts the beach at Tangier. The black strip at the center of the painting is what was a waterfall in earlier sketches of the painting and now simply suggests the idea of a waterfall. The leaves have also been elongated to be more tropical than the earlier works. The figures hover, not occupying any specific space in the scene which is reminiscent of his other Moroccan-influenced works where the objects simply exist in space (Flam 414-416).