Bather 1917

Boris Kustodiev painted this scene of bathers at some point in his life using what looks like thin layers of oil on canvas. I can imagine him working on this outside, en plein air, trying to capture the pale light, the women, the landscape – so much to capture! It is a dreamy scene, full of the business of ordinary life, women bathing, cows grazing, a town waking up. It makes me think about Pierre Bonnard, another painter who saw women as part of the domestic sphere. The surface of the painting seems to be stained with light. The painting has areas of detail and areas where the image just dissolves into the atmosphere. Look how the fence dissolves, it's there and not there at the same time. Maybe Kustodiev wanted to create a place that's half real, half memory, something in-between. It's a timeless theme, the bathers, like the painting is a portal into a shared space between him, the women, and other painters. It feels like a collective, ongoing project.