He wanted to portray the bathers in situ, in a landscape; he did not want to create paintings in a studio. This paradox caused him countless problems, and towards the end of his life he tried to explain them to ƒmile Bernard. ‘You know that I often made sketches of male and female bathers, which I would have liked to have painted, on a large scale, from life. Lack of a model forced me to be content with glimpses. There were other obstacles to overcome, such as finding somewhere to set the scene that would not be too different from the one I had imagined, of gathering together several people, of finding men and women who did not mind undressing and holding the poses I wanted. There were a thousand other difficulties, too, such as carrying around such a large canvas, the vagaries of the weather, the positioning of the canvas, the materials that would be needed to work on it. I was, therefore, forced to abandon my plan, which had been to revise Poussin from nature, rather than build up the composition from notes, drawings and fragmented sketches. I meant to create a real Poussin – from nature, working in the open air, with colour and light – not one of those works that are entirely conceived in the studio and that have that brown tone that indicates there was no daylight, no reflections from the sky.’
