Body, modern leisure and Arcadia rebuilt · 1880s -1910s

Seurat, Cézanne, Émile Bernard, Maurice Denis and Vallotton transform swimming into a modern laboratory: social frieze, synthetic solid colors, structured Arcadia or isolated bodies replace the impressionist moment.

From the 1880s, the ancient theme of bathers became one of the great experimental grounds of the post-impressionist generation. The artists did not form a single school, but shared the refusal to limit painting to fleeting optical printing. In 1884 Georges Seurat gave a monumental scale to A Bathing in Asnières. Men and boys, probably from the working classes, rested on the banks of the Seine in front of the Clichy factories. Immobile profiles, misty light and meticulous preparation transform modern leisure into an almost classic frieze. Émile Bernard follows another path. In his Bathers of the late 1880s, contours firm, flat and synthetist simplification distance the figures from naturalism; the scene becomes pastoral, decorative and symbolic. Maurice Denis, linked to the Nabis, recalls that a painting is first and foremost a surface organized in colors. His bathers in Port-Blanc integrate bodies, rocks and sea at a decorative rhythm where the memory of the place counts as much as its description. Félix Vallotton often isolates a figure on the sand, in front of a rock or in the reeds. The clean body, sometimes strange, contrasts with a simplified space and light without impressionistic softness. Paul Cézanne finally pushes research towards an architecture of color. His Great Bathers, worked until 1906, nudes and landscape merged in a triangular composition which became an essential reference for Picasso and Matisse. Through these approaches, swimming changes status. It can show worker rest, dream of Arcadia, study the construction of the body, release color or question the distance of the gaze. The common motif therefore makes the divergences of post-impressionism particularly visible: optical science, synthetism, Nabi, modern classicism and psychological strangeness. The selection "Post-impressionist bathers and bathers" notably compares After the bath, the nymphs - Émile Bernard and Bathers in Port-Blanc - Maurice Denis. His reading prioritize details.

After Impressionism, swimming is no longer just a moment of light: it becomes a social frieze, decorative surface, mental arcadia or architecture of the body.