The number of figures varied from a single male figure, monumental and stiffly posed, to groups of three, four, five or even more figures. There are seventeen figures in The Large Bathers in the Museum of Art, Philadelphia.
The English critic Roger Fry noted: ΓÇÿC┼╜zanne does not have the gift of taking hold of an idea and expressing it with sufficient force to make it immediately apparent. It is as if he does not quite manage to develop his theme until he has completed the work. There is always something hidden behind what he expresses, something he would really like to capture if he could.ΓÇÖ What, indeed, was C┼╜zanne trying to express through this subject, on which he worked for more than thirty years? Was he seeking to portray the sensuality of the human form? The nudes in his early paintings of orgies and murders are distinctly more expressive and erotic than the bathers, with their apparently asexual bodies and theatrical but meaningless gestures. C┼╜zanne was attempting to go beyond the portrayal of a conventional or classical subject, whether it was real, mythological or mystical.
