
The water’s lovely: art that celebrates bathing – in pictures
A detail from The Swimming Lesson, 1965, by David Hockney. Photograph: All images courtesy of Saatchi Yates gallery
Inspired by “a very long, cold and wet winter”, the Saatchi Yates gallery has curated an exhibition celebrating the joy of bathing, bringing together masters such as Picasso and contemporary artists including Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Peter Doig. Gallerists Phoebe Saatchi Yates and Arthur Yates say that, historically, bathers were depicted in religious and mythological scenes, but that “Cezanne changed this by showing real people in a vision of Arcadia”. Ever since, artists have approached the theme in myriad ways: “Hockney painted two male lovers embracing in a pool, Picasso, a naked woman on the beach before the invention of the bikini, and now, [Ethiopian artist] Tesfaye Urgessa paints a man with his feet in a blood bath.”
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The Bather, 2017, by Peter Doig.
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La Vague, 1896, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau.
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The Fisherman and the Little Fish from Fontaine’s Fables, 1739, by Jean-Baptiste Oudry.
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Untitled, 2023, by Tesfaye Urgessa.
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She and Her, 2017, by Eric Fischl.
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Bathers after Bosuns, 2023, by Danny Fox.
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The Swimming Lesson, 1965, by David Hockney.
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The Bathers, 2023, by Angela Santana.
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Night Swimming, 2023, by Sujin Lee.
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A Forest Landscape, with Diana discovering Callisto’s Pregnancy, and a View of the Priory of Groenendael, 1614, by Denis van Alsloot.