The revelatory restoration in 2024 of Paul Cezanne's monumental late ‘Bathers’ painting draws renewed attention to its acquisition by the National Gallery 60 years ago. The sixth Cezanne painting to enter the national collection – earlier acquisitions were without fanfare – it was recognised by some like sculptor Henry Moore as a new lynchpin of the modern collection but met by others with startling hostility and condemnation. Why? 

This lecture paints – with a broad brush – the complicated social and cultural context in which 'Bathers' arrived in the UK in 1964. The Chatterley trial; the Profumo Scandal; the Cambridge traitors; the Wolfenden Report as yet awaiting enactment; the Beatles and British Pop, art and music both; cosmopolitan London, newly 'swinging' but out of sync with the rest of the country. The acquisition at high price of an angular and rebarbative nude image – long championed by UK class and cultural elites but never enjoying any particular popular appeal – uniquely instantiated social and cultural misgivings at a key moment of historic flux.

Christopher Riopelle is the Neil Westreich Curator of Post 1800 Paintings. He previously held curatorial positions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum, California. He has curated many exhibitions, including 'Gauguin's Portraits' (2019), 'Sorolla: Spanish Master of Light' (2019), 'Thomas Cole: Eden to Empire' and 'Ed Ruscha: Course of Empire' (2018), and 'Australia's Impressionists' (2017).

Funding for the conservation of Cezanne’s 'Bathers' was generously provided through a grant from the Bank of America Art Conservation Project.