Bathers Seated on the Banks of a River 1901

Camille Pissarro made this painting of bathers by a riverbank sometime around 1901. You can see how he's laid down these tiny, feathery strokes of color, like he’s knitting the whole scene together. It's such a process-oriented way to paint. Up close, you can see the texture—those individual strokes give the whole surface a kind of shimmering, vibrant energy. Look at the way he models the figures, it's as if the light itself is made of color. The white dress of the figure in the center shimmers with blues and greens. And the water is just a haze of pinks and blues and yellows. It makes me think of Cezanne and his broken color, or even Monet’s late water lilies. Pissarro, like them, is showing us that painting isn’t just about copying what we see, but about how we see, and how we can create a whole new way of experiencing the world through color and light.